Q House-LEAP Contract Approved

Celebrating the last legislative step in a decade-long effort to revive the ​“Q House,” the Board of Alders unanimously approved a three-year, $300,000 contract between the city and LEAP that will have the local youth tutoring and recreation agency run the reborn Dixwell Avenue community center.

City legislators took that vote Monday night during the latest full Board of Alders meeting, held online via Zoom and YouTube Live.

The alders unanimously approved a contract that would have the city pay the long-time tutoring and swimming instruction nonprofit LEAP—short for Leadership, Education And Athletics In Partnership Inc. — up to $100,000 each year for the next three years to manage the soon-to-reopen ​“Q” House.

The resolution approved on Monday night also allows the city to funnel public money already earmarked by the city Youth and Recreation Department for Q House programming directly to LEAP each year. Another provision of the amended agreement would allow the city and LEAP to accept financial contributions outside of city funding to support programming and operations of the Q House.

In previous public meetings and comments, LEAP Executive Director Henry Fernandez has estimated that his organization will still need to fundraise several hundred thousand dollars each year on top of the city allocation in order to cover the full budget of running the community center, which will include a dance studio, a music studio, a gym, an arts studio, a kitchen, the Stetson Library, the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, a senior center, and various community meeting rooms.

“The Q House building is a historical institution in the Dixwell community,” Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said during the opening ​“divine guidance” section of Monday night’s meeting.

It started out as a ​“navigator, a settlement house” for thousands of Black families who migrated from the South to New Haven in the 1920s to work in the Winchester factories and live in the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods, she said. Over the past century, the former Q House provided a place of recreation, education and community for such New Haven greats as Constance Baker Motley and Jesse Hameen.

A generation of youth lost out on experiencing ​“the love and commitment of the Q” when the old community center shuttered in 2003, Morrison said.

For years after the old Q House’s shuttering, state and local politicians and community activists lobbied for state support to bring back the Q House. In January 2016, thanks to the advocacy of then-Mayor Toni Harp and of alders like Morrison, the city secured over $15 million in state funds to build a new Q House. That package included $1 million to build within the Q House a new home for the Stetson Library branch. The old Q House building was demolished in January 2016, and Harp signed the contract to kick off construction on the new building in August 2019.

“Today is a new day. Today is a better day, because of you,” Morrison said to her colleagues on the board Monday night. ​“Because of your belief in community, in the youth and in our senior residents. Collectively, we used our political capital and resources and made this safe space a priority.”

Also during the opening section of Monday night’s meeting, Hillhouse High School sophomore Elsa Holahan and Hillhouse junior Tremayne Sweat walked the alders through a virtual tour of the soon-to-open new building. Both New Haven students are youth directors on the Q House Advisory Board.

Holahan’s tour of the site included the new two-story Stetson Library, the ​“Toni Harp memorial museum,” a host of recreational and office spaces, a senior citizen wing, a recording studio, an arts and crafts room, a dance studio, and more.

Click on the video below to watch the virtual tour.