5 Questions for the Churchill Project

Hey everyone, I’m back after a hiatus that went way longer than I had originally intended. But I have a new job and things are all good and squared away in my life so I’m back to writing. 

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Since I’ve been gone the subject of possibly renovating the old Churchill Junior High School into a Community/Youth/Senior Center has heated up considerably. It has escalated to the point that the City has now assumed ownership of the building from the school district. At the last city council meeting there was nearly 2 hours of discussion that included council members and the general public. Often at these meetings there is not anywhere near this level of discussion and debate on any topic, but this one is animating the Council and the public.

So I guess you may be wondering what I think about it, so I’ll state the short version of my thoughts upfront and leave the rest of the article as justification and exploration.

1. I believe in the goals and ideals put forward for a community center

2. I don’t believe renovating Churchill is the answer unless we can show that we will for sure be able to support the project along with programs and services that will adequately use the space  

So just having this upfront, I do not support the current project for Churchill as it currently stands. That could change with the right amount of planning, but currently it feels like there is very little plan but very many ideals. And I’m hesitant to go against this project because I actually do agree with the ideals. I don’t want to be lumped together with the people who don’t agree with the ideals. But as it currently stands I don’t think we need Churchill to achieve our goals, and at worst going forward with the Churchill project could leave us out a whole lot of money with a mostly empty underused building.

The Ideals

So what are these ideals and goals that I keep mentioning? There are a lot of proposed uses (both formally and informally) for the community center including: youth sports center, after school activities, serve hot meals to seniors and disadvantaged, hub for local nonprofits and NGOs, temporary shelter for homeless people, long term shelter, event space, educational classes, child care, mental health services, and more. I think broadly all the uses fit into three generally categories:

1. Programs for our youth outside of school

2. Services and programs for our Seniors

3. Services and programs for our disadvantaged

And I will say that I am basically all for all of these goals and individual programs. These are all laudable goals and services that I hope our community could and should provide. We need to help our kids, we need to help our seniors, and the disadvantaged always can use more help.

But we run into an issue. I know from my interest in public policy that it is much harder to build and maintain good programs and services than it is to build/renovate a building. My greatest fear is that we’ll spend the 5, 8, or 10 million dollars to renovate the school into a beautiful community center, but then won’t have any money for programs and the building sits mostly empty. Or we could even have the money for programs but fail to set clear priorities and in the end have no programs because we tried to spread ourselves too thin and try to solve every problem. 

I am the guy who has been touting that we need to think small and not try for moonshots anymore. This project feels like a moonshot to save the community. In the discussions and debates around this some of our past moonshots are invoked. The industrial park, the proposed lake expansion; those happened or got proposed so why don’t we get to have our project? But those other projects were bad moonshots that ended up not panning out, so bringing those up to me almost feels like saying “we should get a shot at a bad project too.” I know that’s not what the people making the argument mean, but I can’t help but hear that. This doesn’t have to be a bad project though, but there is a lot of groundwork to do before this is a truly good project.

How do we make this a good project?

How do we go forward? What should we do? I don’t think the answer is nothing, but then again I don’t have clear ideas about what exactly a community center is/ what services we truly need as a first priority. I haven’t heard any great studies or instances of community centers really turning things around for a community, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen here. But we need to have the right vision and execute on it. A project isn’t good just based on the merit of what it tries to solve, it’s good based on actually solving those problems. 

So I have come up with 5 questions that need to be answered in this order before we decide to go forward with the Churchill project. If we’re able to get definite answers for all five of these and Churchill still looks like the best option, then at that point I would believe this would be a good project.

Question 1: What programs/services do we want? And how many of those can we afford?

This is the first step because you need to know what you’re going to do with a building before you build it. You don’t build a restaurant and then try to figure out what kind of restaurant it’s going to be afterwards. It’s quite a risk starting with the expensive building and then figuring out what to do with it. So what services are we going to provide?

Also if it isn’t obvious, we probably can’t do every single program that I listed out earlier in the post. Like child care on its own is something that is very expensive and difficult to administer. We’ll need to prioritize, whether it's by what gets us the most for our money or by what we want the most. Regardless, decisions need to be made on the scope of programs that we want, it can’t just be “all of the above”. Unfortunately we’ll need to say no to some things.

Question 2: Now that we’ve chosen what programs we want, which of them can be done in other buildings we already own as a community?

Galesburg as a community has a lot of public spaces that are under utilized. We have a great many parks and facilities that don’t get a ton of use. If we were actually able to have programs that utilized the spaces then they would be more utilized and seen as more valuable.

Like here’s a list of some of the things I’ve thought of: 

• Some people want sports activities outside of school for their kids to go to. We have lots of outdoor space if we want to start more leagues and programs to use them. We also have Hawthorne gym available. People like to talk about Churchill having a gym, but we already have Hawthorne which is underused. What do we need to do for kids to use it? Have someone there to supervise an open gym? Have 3 v 3 basketball leagues? Have volleyball leagues? 

• Along with that we have our indoor tennis facilities over at Lakeside that are under used. Maybe we need to start a program that gets more kids playing tennis? We could start a city league that’s sorted by ability? Do we need to provide some sort of transportation out there?

• We want activities for our kids to do after school or while school isn’t in session. It seems to me like we need to have more after-school programs, but those can be at the school. We’re already paying for these facilities that look after and instruct our kids, why not keep them there? I know not every kid will want to stay at the school to do stuff, but not every kid will want to go to a government run community center as well. I also doubt there is a very large population of kids who would go to an after school program at a community center but not at the school, so why not keep them at the school? Why pay extra to have a separate building when we’re already paying for one and will be mostly empty if we have after school activities elsewhere?

• Another program I’ve heard asked for is a place for seniors to get a hot meal. We could also use our schools for that. The High School has a big kitchen that can feed a lot of people. Why can’t we work out some deal between the school district and another organization to serve meals for seniors out of there when the students aren’t there? The kitchen isn’t really used after lunch, it’s available for dinner.

The point of all this is that if we decide what programs we want from the first step, we can then probably find a home for some or all of those programs in spaces that we already pay for as citizens of Galesburg.

Question 3: If we have programs/services that we’re going to do but can’t find a home for, what are the minimum requirements we need in a dedicated space to house them?

So of the programs we can’t house elsewhere in town, what is the smallest amount of space we would need to house them? Do we need big or small rooms? Is it necessary that we need a kitchen, cafeteria, or gym? What are the absolutely necessary components of what we would need in a community center to house these extra programs?

Question 4: Can we afford the programs AND the new community center?

This one is rather self explanatory. We need to see what the cost of these programs are and what the cost of a new center would be. If we can’t afford all of it then we will need to trim down our programs or facility some. I know some will take the opportunity to say we can’t afford anything. We can afford to do more programs, but we need to figure how much we can actually afford and plan accordingly.

There has also been lots of talk of outside groups possibly helping. They would need to be consulted at every level before this but at this stage they would need to be locked in to their obligations. 

Question 5:  Given all we’ve figured out in the last four steps, do we need to renovate Churchill in order to meet our needs for a community center?

If we get through all the other questions, I personally doubt we would come out needing Churchill to fulfill our needs. Unless the city and community is suddenly able to provide money for way more services than we already have, I doubt we’ll need the whole building. I doubt we would be able to even fill the whole building. Not to say it isn’t possible, but from what I see now it doesn’t look like it to me. We would need to find a more suitable space that would cost less.

I think we need to also seriously consider the current library to be the community center once we move into the new library. It too will be a vacant building that we own as a community. And if we end up deciding we truly need a gym or kitchen or whatever else in the building, we can add on to the building for what would probably cost way less than renovating the whole Churchill building. We would have to build over some of the parking lot spaces at the library, but as long as we have enough handicap parking we should be fine. Otherwise there are several big lots and plenty of street parking in the area. It would be a perfect location if we are going to indeed have a community center. 

Concluding Thoughts

The needs of our community are great. We have the capacity to provide more to the community than we currently do. But we don’t have enough to provide for all of our needs. We need to be smart about what we do. We can’t really afford inefficiency. Not to say that we expect government services to make a profit or something like that, but if we’re going to provide services it should be for the lowest cost possible with as little waste as possible. If we’re efficient then we’re able to use the savings to do even more. 

If we’re going to do this, we need to do it as a series of small steps. Figure out the programs, find as many homes for the programs as possible, figure out what space we need, figure out the finances, and then finally we could possibly go forward with the renovation of Churchill. But at the current trajectory it almost feels like we’re trying to go in reverse order.

If we go forward on this project without diligence, I feel like there is a high chance that it won’t live up anywhere near to the dreams and goals for it. And what’s more valuable: acting quickly on those dreams in a way that is risky and doesn’t ensure their success, or taking it slow and lining up all the details to ensure safely that your dreams are fulfilled? I believe in those dreams, I want them to happen, but I don’t think this specific project with what we currently have figured out is a good one for Galesburg right now. With the right groundwork I could change my mind, but right now I’m not seeing it. Churchill could just be a money pit that ends up providing nothing to the community, and I don’t want to see that future happen. We have to be smart in every move we make, otherwise it can just end up as a wasted effort.