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Two BPS schools have left the site, leaving the neighborhood’s only city-run community center with scant programming and dilapidated infrastructure.
Residents are demanding action to revitalize the Jackson Mann Community Center in Allston-Brighton. It’s the only city-run community center in the neighborhood, and it’s lacking much-needed services, advocates say.
“It’s a hole that needs to be filled if we’re going to be a really sustainable community. Boy, a community center is such an important part of that,” Anthony D’Isidoro, the president of the Allston Civic Association, said in an interview.
Nearly 300 people attended a formal hearing sponsored by City Councilor Liz Breadon at Jackson Mann in October.
“The community spoke loud and clear. I was so impressed with the diversity of the folks who attended,” Breadon told Boston.com. “The message was that the community center is an important asset in our neighborhood, and that we want a new community center, and we want programming that meets the needs of our communities.”
Community leaders described the community’s need for Jackson Mann’s youth programming, child care, and recreation. Kelly McGrath, lifelong Brighton resident and executive director of Brighton Main Streets, teared up when describing her childhood at Jackson Mann, working at the summer camp in her 20s, and attending Christmas wreath-making with her daughter.
“My mother depended on places like the Jackson Mann and their programs to provide us with a safe space to be while she worked. I remember doing ceramics for the first time and dancing with my friends to ‘Rock with You’ by Michael Jackson right in this very room,” she said. “Jackson Mann has meant so much to so many.”
BPS left the site, while community center remains
The Jackson Mann K-8 school, which shared a building with the center in Union Square, closed in 2022. The Horace Mann School for the Deaf, connected to Jackson Mann by a skybridge, was in a much larger building on Armington Street before moving to Charlestown in June.
Plans by Boston Public Schools to build a new school at the site appear to have stalled, while most of the 1974 building was recommended for demolition, according to a 2019 engineering report by BPS.
All that remains at the site is a community center run by Boston Centers for Youth and Families with scant programming. After-school and preschool programs are on hold until the completion of a new center, its website says, while English as a second language programming remains.
ESL classes were originally supposed to be moved this summer from the building, which the city says has reached the end of its usable life, to Brighton High School. But with increasing enrollment at the high school, Breadon said, the classes weren’t moved from the site. Now, ESL classes will remain at the building “for the foreseeable future until a move is necessary to allow for demolition/construction,” according to one city FAQ.
The front entrance and upper floor classrooms of Jackson Mann aren’t used anymore, but ESL students can enter on Armington Street.
Neighborhood is underfunded, Breadon says, but available money wasn’t spent
There are more than 30 city-run community centers in Boston, including five in Dorchester and two in the North End. In Allston-Brighton, one of the city’s most densely populated neighborhoods, there’s only one, Jackson Mann, and it’s “barely able to function at the moment,” Breadon said.
Breadon represents District 9, which is all of Allston-Brighton. The neighborhood is surrounded by Brookline, Cambridge, and Watertown, making it one of the most physically isolated neighborhoods in Boston. Jackson Mann is the only BCYF center in the neighborhood.
“We’re sort of out on a limb, out here in Allston-Brighton,” Breadon said. “It’s an equity issue for our young people who live in the neighborhood,” including those who don’t own vehicles.
Going back decades, the city appropriated some money for upkeep at Jackson Mann, like a new HVAC system and new windows, but that money was never spent, Breadon said. A spokesperson for the city didn’t offer a comment when asked directly about the unspent funds.
“It’s one of those buildings, those poured concrete buildings that were poorly designed and badly maintained, and we end up with this building on our hands,” she said. “It’s been the city’s evaluation of the building that it should be demolished.”
D’Isidoro said after BPS decided to leave the site, the city released a report in October of 2023 that detailed plans worth nearly $50 million to rebuild the community center. The most recent community meeting was in April of 2023.
“We get studied to death here in Allston-Brighton,” he said. “The next step is, make a commitment and announce you’re going to do it, and nothing ever came of it. It was like they put it virtually up on the wall and up on the shelf, and that was that.”
What’s next for Jackson Mann?
Right now, there are no set plans for renovation or demolition for the building. Breadon said with support from the city, the Jackson Mann building could be demolished, and a new “state-of-the-art” community center should be built at the same location — an uncommonly large plot of land in the neighborhood that is also the intersection of multiple popular bus lines.
“It’s such a large site that there might be a way that we could defray some of the cost by building some housing on the site,” Breadon said. “We’d have to do some significant fundraising, as well as put city money into it.”
She’s been fighting for capital project funds to go towards the project, which she sees coming together as a new building at the same site. She voted against the FY25 Capital Budget in June, in part due to “persistent underinvestment” in Allston-Brighton.
Breadon’s “no” vote for the FY25 budget came after the neighborhood received the least amount of funding for projects at only $47 million out of every neighborhood in the city, $192 million less than the average across the city’s other neighborhoods.
According to BCYF, there’s $4.125 million appropriated in the five-year FY25-29 Capital Budget for “planning and design part of the project.“
“The City is committed to finding a new home for the community center in a facility and location that is informed by the community input process which wrapped up last year,” BCYF said in a statement. “In the meantime, the center is continuing operations in their new space at the Jackson/Horace Mann School complex to ensure there is programming and resources for Allston-Brighton families.”
Breadon said the center could use “a little care,” including cleaning out the building and a fresh coat of paint ahead of programming in January at the Armington building.
“It’s always boiled down to money at the end of the day. How are we going to fund rebuilding a new community center? Where’s the money going to come from?” Breadon said. “My concern is that we need to make sure that the building where they’re going to temporarily operate from is clean and painted then and will serve the needs of the community in the interim.”
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