The Martin Luther King Center has sat mostly untouched for years. Now, McComb officials are discussing how to make the best use out of the property.
Selectmen Tommy McKenzie, Andranette Jordan and Tammy Witherspoon held a third meeting at the Martin Luther King Center Monday to discuss how to open the building up for public use during the day instead of continuing with its mostly under-used rental-only operations.
At a town hall meeting in June, residents of Ward 5 asked repeatedly for the city to do something about the vacant center and condemned gym that once were focal points for community activity.
Since then, the three selectmen and a group of community members have been discussing how to get the ball rolling and reopen the center.
The gym itself is a separate project. Recreation director Joseph Parker has been working with contractors to get estimates to demolish, renovate and rebuild the gym. He plans to have some of those figures at the city’s work session next Tuesday.
“We developed this committee to look at different avenues to get this building utilized and serve a purpose for the community and how to create an organization so it can sustain itself for a prolonged period of time,” McKenzie said. “We’re opening it up to the community for ideas.”
Multiple interested organizations were at the meeting, including Monique Gilmore representing Excel By 5, McComb Superintendent Dr. Cederick Ellis for the school district and Kevin Bates with Kings Sports.
Excel By 5 is using a classroom on the south side of the center from 9 to 11 a.m. Mondays in October and November for Read and Rise, a program to teach parents how to read with their children. The program also will offer books to take home.
Though Ellis had not attended any of the previous meetings, he was the most willing to take the ball and run with it.
“Our vision is to have a true community center, where it’s open during the day as a resource center for parents and a tutoring program after school,” Ellis said. “If this was utilized by the school district, not only would we have a tutoring program for students, but also provide education for all residents in the area.”
The center was renovated in 2005 and has multiple rooms and a commercial kitchen. The building is wi-fi ready and can easily accommodate multiple groups or classes at once. But one key ingredient is missing — a manager.
When the center was open, a full-time employee was dedicated to bringing in programs. City budget cuts in 2008 eliminated that position.
“I’d like to hope that’s not off the table with the city, because a manager here would simply be that person coordinating the services and the community,” Witherspoon said. “We need a manager here. When the center was open, we had a manager here. They had exercise classes, after-school tutoring, all this stuff. It was that person’s job to bring all those resources in, and it worked well.”
Ellis made it clear that if the building was used by the school district, the center would be open every weekday and there would be an employee during operating hours.
“It may not be open 8 to 5, but we’ll have someone here when it is open,” Ellis said.
Retired teacher and Black History Gallery director Hilda Casin, who has been to all of the meetings, decided it was time to stop talking and time to start doing.
“We need to do something. This is the third meeting I’ve attended, and we keep going round and round,” she said. “You’ve heard from Dr. Ellis, you’ve heard from these people offering to do something. Let’s have a starting point. You said you want to know what the community wants — who wants to help with the questionnaire?”
Ellis volunteered to take the lead on developing a questionnaire and will meet with Casin and King Sports’ Bates this afternoon. Their goal is to have the questions ready by Friday.
The survey will include basic census information of residents in the Burglund area without names attached, including how many people live in a home, an age range and basic interests. It also will ask what residents would personally like to see in the center and if they would be interested in any of the proposed ideas: hot meal programs, after-school tutoring, preschool activities, exercise classes and adult education classes.
Greg Gilmore, a board member of the McComb Housing Authority, volunteered to go door-to-door and gather information in the authority’s 435 public housing units.
The survey also will be put online and disseminated through Facebook and the Enterprise-Journal. Selectmen also are trying to think of other ways to get the information to and from the community.
Bates pledged to work with whoever is involved with the center for the betterment of the community.
“Our number-one need is that the school system is not doing well,” Bates said. “In my opinion, I think the school would be a great platform for this community center to stand up on.”
