Community Center Loses Lease
Swarthmore Community Center’s home of the past 47 years.
As of August 2020, the Swarthmore Community Center, over the decades a locus of arts and exercise classes, after-school clubs and teenage dances, party rentals and fundraising events, will cease to host any of these activities in the space it has occupied for the past 47 years.
The Community Center board was notified last month by Swarthmore College that its $1 per year lease will not be renewed next August, because the college wishes to regain control of the space for unspecified programming needs. The Arts and Crafts-era building, adjacent to Swarthmore Presbyterian Church at 727 Harvard Avenue, is near several of the college’s residence halls, including the new Pittenger, Palmer and Roberts dorms competed in 2018, and adjoins the college’s baseball field.
Greg Brown, Swarthmore College VP for Finance and Administration, said the College will first “hire an architect to see what the highest and best use of the space can be. It’s significant real estate, right on the edge of campus, and given our space crunches, it was time to really look at that … We are looking to repurpose the building, not do away with it. It’s got good bones.”
In advance of this week’s SCC board meeting, chair Geoff Anderson said that possibilities are being explored to share program space with other community buildings in the area. “We’ve kept our users in the loop,” Anderson said. “We’re actively looking for other opportunities, either for another building, or rethinking the brand.”
Play groups, programming of the Creative Living Room, and after-school programs of Trinity Cooperative Day Nursery for third to sixth graders keep the building in use every weekday. Party and meeting rentals to individuals are still available, and community nonprofit events are hosted free or at discounted rates. Two Girl Scout troops as well as Boy Scouts have used the space for years.
Greg Brown said, “We want to make things go as smoothly as possible; that’s part of the reason for the year-long transition. We’re open to continuing conversations, especially with TCDN and the Creative Living Room.”
