LEAP Tapped To Manage Q House

The city has tapped the youth tutoring and recreation agency LEAP to oversee programming at the reborn Dixwell Q House community center.

City Budget Director and Acting Controller Michael Gormany announced that partnership Wednesday night towards the beginning of a six-hour public budget hearing and departmental workshop hosted by the aldermanic Finance Committee on Zoom and YouTube Live.

He said the city recently completed a request for proposal (RFP) application process to try to find a company to manage day-to-day community programs at the still-under-construction new Q House, which the city is building on the site of the demolished former neighborhood hub.

The city wound up choosing LEAP, short for Leadership, Education And Athletics In Partnership Inc., the long-time local youth tutoring and swimming instruction group that already runs a community center on Jefferson Street in Wooster Square.

LEAP Executive Director Henry Fernandez confirmed for the Independent Thursday morning that his group has been selected to manage programming at the new Q House. He said his LEAP is still finalizing the contract for that work with the city.

“We will be having two roles there,” he said.

“One is, we’ll be responsible for a set of spaces that are just amazing that allow for community programming for both children and adults. Those include a dance studio, a music studio, a gym, an arts studio, a big kitchen and community meeting spaces.”

LEAP will be responsible for arranging and managing activities in those spaces and ​“making them accessible to community partners as well,” he said.

LEAP’s second responsibility at the new Dixwell community center site will be coordinating activities among local agencies that have already announced they will be moving into the Q House when the building opens. Those includes the Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, the Stetson public library branch, and the Dixwell/Newhallville senior center.

“That’s both basic logistics, things like parking and hours that we’re open,” Fernandez said about the coordinating role, ​“and also the opportunities to do amazing new activities because of the fact that we’re all there.”

For example, he said, that could include having the Q House host a community health fair that makes use of the space and the talents of Cornell Scott Hill Health Center. It could also include job fairs, or book signings and readings hosted by the library.

Fernandez said the new Q House should be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., six days a week, to start.

“Our goal will be to build it out to seven days” a week.

He said LEAP will also work closely with the Q House Advisory Board, which he praised for being proactive already about what kinds of programs the new community center should host.

And he said LEAP will be hiring two full-time staff people to work at the Q House, and will train an additional 20 local college and high school students to work at the site.

“July is when the building becomes available,” Fernandez said about the anticipated completion of construction. ​“I think we anticipate being able to move in to the space in August,” and kick off programming in full by September.

$100K Management Fee; $755K In Total Budgeted By City

Wednesday night’s public meeting marked the second opportunity in as many days for the Finance Committee alders to take a department-by-department look at Mayor Justin Elicker’s two proposed Fiscal Year 2021 – 2022 (FY22) general fund budgets—a $589.1 million ​“crisis” version and a $606.2 million ​“forward together” budget.

During his presentation to the alders, Gormany (pictured above) said that the city has included $755,000 in total for the Q House in next fiscal year’s proposed budget(s).

That includes $155,000 for utilities, $350,000 for building operations like security, custodial services, and repairs and maintenance, and $250,000 for leases, management fee, and youth and other programming.

That latter pool of funds includes $100,000 for the city’s pending contract with LEAP, he said.

“LEAP is really there to work with us, to help the Q House get programming and everything else up and running,” Gormany told the alders. However, the $100,000 for LEAP is not going to cover the entire cost of programming for the site. ​“There is going to be a fundraising piece.”

Fernandez confirmed on Thursday that LEAP is set to get $100,000 from the city next fiscal year for its programming work at the Q House.

And, he said, that’s only a fraction of the estimated $600,000 that running the new community center should actually cost. He said LEAP will be working to fundraise over the course of the coming months to have enough money to run the site.

He also said he expects the city’s contribution to the programming budget should increase in future years once the site is up and fulling running.

Gormany told the alders Monday that the Q House ​“is a city-owned facility and program, which means that the city has to fund it.”

He said the utility, security, custodial, and other building operation costs are estimates put together by himself and City Engineer Giovanni Zinn based on their research into the cost of running comparably sized city-owned buildings.

“It’s not going to be perfect, as this is going to be the first year that the Q House is operational,” he said about the budget estimates. But it’s a start.

Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison (pictured) praised the city’s selection of LEAP, and its funding set-aside for the new community center.

“I think this is just a wonderful, wonderful model for all of the country to follow,” Morrison said about the public-private partnership for running the Q House.

“This amount of programing that we’re about to come upon this summer, this is a special opportunity.”