Building a South Side community center: Nonprofit leaders share their visions

In 2018, the South Side branch of the Boys and Girls Club on East Fourth Street shut its doors. Since 2020, there have been talks about building a South Side community center to fill the hole it left. 

Winston Alozie, the chief executive officer of the Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem, said a large part of Mayor J. William Reynolds’ 2020 mayoral campaign was the promise to build a community center in the South Side. 

“There’s not a place where people, especially young people, feel is theirs,” Reynolds said. “We have those places in other parts of the city, but we don’t have one in the middle of South Side.” 

 After Reynolds’ 2022 election, he organized a committee of community leaders, including Alozie, to analyze how to proceed with his ideas for a South Side community center. 

The committee conducted a needs assessment, which showed a demand for a space dedicated to community gatherings. Many of the places that previously were used for this, such as ethnic beneficial societies, closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

 On March 13, 2024, there was a town hall meeting where residents were invited to share their thoughts the community center and what they want out of it. 

“The planning process has taken a couple of years because we want to be very intentional about listening, sitting down and hearing from people — residents, citizens and people that have been here 50 years — about what they think are the needs of South Bethlehem,”  Reynolds said. 

Reynolds also said determining the community center’s site is difficult due to cost, location, size and access considerations.

In the first quarter of 2023, Reynolds said the city of Bethlehem began conducting a feasibility study focused on financial and site analysis with the support of AOS Architects and MASS Design Group, as well as two financial consulting firms, Taggart Associates and Ideas & Action.

Once the study is complete, he said the next steps and timeline will be released to the public. 

The Brown and White spoke to South Side nonprofit leaders about their visions for the center. 

Marc Rittle, Executive Director of New Bethany

Marc Rittle, the executive director of New Bethany, said New Bethany serves many families that come through their doors. The shelter is dedicated to housing previously homeless children and has 12 units of family housing.

Rittle said New Bethany has a relationship with the Boys and Girls Club that allows any of the children housed at New Bethany to use the Boys and Girls Club’s resources for free. 

However, he said it’s hard to transport children from New Bethany’s location in the South Side to the Boys and Girls Club’s location on the North Side.

Rittle said he hopes New Bethany will foster a similar relationship with the South Side community center so children can use services for free or at a discounted rate. He also hopes the community center addresses the lack of safe recreation areas for kids, provides homework help and assists with technological needs.

Rittle said a key part of the process is to ensure the city government provides talks with local partners and “open community meetings to keep everything transparent.”

Anna Smith, Director of Community Action Lehigh Valley 

Community Action Lehigh Valley uses spaces in local public schools, like Broughal Middle School or Fountain Hill Elementary, for their programming. However, Anna Smith, the director of Community Action Lehigh Valley, said these spaces are also shared with other community meetings, and there’s often not enough space available.  

Smith said basketball courts and other recreational “third spaces” kids have access to in the South Side also aren’t obtainable in the winter. 

She said she hopes the community center provides a safe third environment for children outside of home and school.  

“The biggest thing that I hear from kids in our community and neighbors is a need for a safe place where kids can just go and be after school,” Smith said. 

Smith said she doesn’tthink the single site model of a community center would work as parents become increasingly worried about their children walking, so having only one community center site in the South Side might limit certain children’s access.

She also said she thinks the best use of the community center’s funds would be to expand pre-existing programming in places like schools that would easily reach more children.. 

Winston Alozie, Chief Executive Officer of Boys and Girls Club of Bethlehem

Alozie has worked with the mayor to support the community’s needs since the closing of the Boys and Girls Club onthe South Side. 

He said two community centers would best fit the needs of the South Side due to the high volume  of student housing in the “middle swatch” — Broadway to Filmore Street. 

Alozie said the Boys and Girls Club’s South Side location likely closed because of thisgentrification, since it was located in this area — an area void of families in need. 

He said  two community center locations would also be favorable due to Bethlehem’s typography. It would be unrealistic to ask children and families from one area to travel to the other. 

As a child, Alozie benefitted from the now-defunct South Side Boys and Girls Club, and he said it would be beneficial to have the Boys and Girls Club  be involved at the finished community center through youth programming and information.

Alozie also said he wants the community center to show that there are still families and children in the South Side who are part of a socially rich community. He hopes this will make developers think before building another luxury high rise, like the proposed apartment building on Evans St.

“I would love (for) this community center (to) be something that will change the hearts of the developers,” Alozie said. “Outside of their pockets or profits being large or their investments being secured, this community center is an investment in families in South Bethlehem because it’s families that built South Bethlehem.”