The City of Boston announced last week that there will be a community meeting on the Jackson Mann Community Center on May 28 at 6 p.m. at the community center itself.

The meeting comes as the city’s capital plan left only $10 million for the project. Residents were not happy, as demonstrated by the rally outside the Boston Centers for Youth and Families (BCYF) Community Center earlier in April – https://gvimes.link/jackrally

And that’s the issue at heart here. The Jackson Mann is the only community center for Allston and Brighton, one of the most populous neighborhoods in the city and one of the densest in the metro area. Allston and Brighton have a reputation as student warehouses, and that’s reflected in the neighborhoods’ homeownership rates; 12 and 20 percent respectively.

But the high density also means that there is a large number of permanent residents who make Allston and Brighton their community. And residents have been advocating fiercely for the community center, which many fear would fade into obscurity if they let it.

The city has been aware that the Jackson Mann has needed a renovation and/or reconstruction since at least 2019, when it first announced that the Jackson Mann school, the Horace Mann School and the community center were to be shut down. Different alternatives for the community center were tried – like utilizing Brighton High School – but they didn’t stick, and so the city shored up the building and continued to use it as a community center.

After a few waves of community meetings designed to elicit input and feedback from residents from 2021 to around 2023, the project went a bit dark for a while, until hundreds of residents came for a listening session in the fall of 2024. Hundreds came out to make it clear that the community needed a community center.

So you can imagine why the announcement of $10 million in design and preliminary costs for the center earlier this spring might have annoyed some residents.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu released a letter for the announcement of the May 28 meeting, detailing the background of the project and why the building has been so tough to tackle.

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“Unlike some of our other buildings though, the Jackson Mann will not be a simple rebuild,” she wrote. “The parcels involved are large enough to support more than one use, formerly hosting two BPS schools and a BCYF facility. Given BPS enrollment trends in the neighborhood, we must closely examine whether or not a new school is needed in this location. Many residents have also advocated for housing to be added onsite to address critical housing affordability challenges in the community.”

Wu also addressed the $10 million question directly.

“The $10 million allocated in the capital plan budget represents funding for the design and permitting phase of the project. Boston is in a challenging budget moment, but we are continuing to plan for Jackson Mann’s redevelopment. After we determine the mix of uses that will be housed on this site, the City will proceed to design. As the project advances and cost estimates are completed, the allotment in the capital plan will grow.”

Residents may be nervous about the fact that the project has been in the “design and permitting phase of the project” for some time, as the last public meeting on the project was held in 2023.

For more information on the city’s side of the project, go to https://gvimes.link/jackmannproj