A few hundreds residents, officials, consultants and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu crammed into the auditorium at the Jackson Mann Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF) Community Center in Allston last Thursday for a jam-packed meeting.

The biggest takeaway from the meeting is that the Jackson Mann Community Center is almost certainly being rebuilt.

“Yes, the community center is happening,” said Wu. “That has always been the intention of the city and I’m sorry if at any point it felt like we weren’t communicating that clearly.”

Jackson Mann Executive Director Rosie Hanlon said she was happy to see more residents attend this time around than the 2024 community meeting, and said it reminds her of when the Jackson Mann was first being proposed.

“About 50 years ago I was passing out flyers for residents to get involved in the Community Center, so it’s heartwarming to see everybody back together again,” she said.

The biggest question, however, is how and when. And those two variables are, according to city officials, up to residents.

The city presented its housing study – https://gvimes.link/jackmannstudy – which details what the city has outlined as options for the site. The plan is to have a community center there, but the site was also formerly the home of the Jackson Mann K-8 School and the Horace Mann School, and there is a lot of real estate there. City of Boston Deputy Chief of Operations Patricia Cafferky and Wu both said these options are essentially placeholders, and that residents need to give input so that the city and the neighborhoods of Allston and Brighton can come to a consensus on what’s going on the site.

“I also want this neighborhood to push us to think outside our usual standard functions and combinations,” Wu said. “This is one of the most creative parts of the city, and this will be a community center connected to our arts and multi-generational cultural communities here.… If we just build a community center, there will be a youth space, a senior space, rooms to accommodate standard functions. But we don’t usually have rehearsal rooms in every community center, small business market stalls, or things like that. I’m just throwing things out here. This is a moment to think outside the box.”

The plan presented several options and what each option would mean in terms of cost. The specific details of each plan can be found in the presentation linked above, but the main gist of each is that the more market-rate housing you put on the site, the cheaper the community center would be. The construction timeline in the presented scenarios looked to put construction in 2030, if all goes to plan.

Cafferky said the main input they are looking for is uses. She said they outlined some basic uses as a starting point, which included the community center being combined with housing and/or a new school. She said the multiple uses would make for their own complications in terms of bidding and construction, so she said the city is looking to have a concrete plan by the end of the year so that design, oversight, bidding, final approvals and construction can begin as soon as possible.

“We could collect feedback forever, but we want to make sure we’re moving at a pace where we’re being diligent and where you can actually get results,” Cafferky said. “What kind of feedback would be most helpful in this situation? Step 1 is what uses are going on the site? Is it a school? Is it market-rate housing? Is it affordable housing? And, obviously, is it a community center? We really need to nail down which of those other three things are going on here with the BCYF. This site is too big just for BCYF. And is there another use that we have not contemplated that should be on the site?”

Resident Sharon Daly, and other residents, pointed out that with the budget problems the city is facing – the cuts to housing from the federal government and the general economic outlook for the state – even if the city is able to subsidize the community center with market-rate housing, who is going to be able to afford those units?

“This budget has, in my opinion, a lot of discrepancies based on what we’ve heard today,” she said. “Our ‘progressive’ city is cutting resources to youth jobs, immigrant resources, affordable housing and I think anybody walking down Comm Ave. knows that we have plenty of housing in the neighborhood, and most of it is luxury that’s priced far beyond what we can afford. Allston-Brighton does not need more overpriced luxury housing. We need and demand robust BCYF resources so this community can grow and thrive right here in Allston-Brighton.”

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Residents also touched on affordable homeownership in the neighborhood, which has been a touchy subject lately to say the least. Several developments that initially promised homeownership in the neighborhoods – Allston has about 12 percent homeownership and Brighton has about 20 percent – were retooled in the last few years to be rentals, with the current economic outlook being blamed as the cause.

Cafferky and consultant Utile Principal Brett Benson said the study looked at homeownership, and that while it is doable – combination homeownership was implemented in two of the other three library/ housing proposals the city used as examples in this study – with possibly multiple uses and types of housing on the site, it would make construction and ownership details complicated and likely take more time to get the community center built.

The issue of a school was also a hot topic at the meeting. Boston Public Schools (BPS) representatives Chief of Operations Brian Forde, Chief of Capital Planning Delavern Stanislaus, and Senior Deputy Superintendent of Operations Dr. Samuel Depina all said they would look into how a school could work on the site, but well before they spoke, Cafferky said BPS has been looking at the enrollment data, which has seen decreases in the last decade.

“Enrollment has been changing and this neighborhood has changed,” she said. “We have a federal administration that has drastically impacted enrollment, which has been a moving calculation over the last two years.”

More than a few residents advocated for a school.

“I just want you to know how badly this neighborhood needs a school,” said resident Laura Becker.

“I happen to be the school nurse at the Winship School,” said teacher Jessica Kraft. “We have three kids here that we are raising here in Brighton, and I don’t know where the data is coming from as to why schools are not needed and where all the families are. You want to know where all the families are? Running around the neighborhood trying to take care of their kids because there is no where else to go. The reality is the few that are here couldn’t all show up tonight because we’re all taking care of each other and each other’s children, and people are driving people different places. You would see everybody if we had a public place.”

Residents also asked about specific budget numbers on what the project would cost. Cafferky said they couldn’t reliably get into specific numbers at the moment, since costs are likely to increase with at least inflation, and they don’t have a specific idea of what to do yet. Residents also asked about services at the Jackson Mann during construction, and the administration said they would be looking at moving services to other public buildings around the area. Cafferky also said they would have ample notification for voting location changes, as the center serves as the voting space for much of the neighborhood.

“We are actively working with the Elections Department for where all five precincts will go during construction,” she said. “It’s an active thing, but it’s not the sexiest, so we didn’t bring it before you tonight. But we will make that part of the process.”

There is currently a comment period and survey open for the project, but neither has yet been scheduled at the date of publication.