'Built by teens for teens': New activity center in Old Town Fort Collins to open in June

A large couch and some stuffed chairs where people can hang out in front of a screen to watch TV or movies, or play video games, sit on one side of the main room.

There’s enough space in the rest of the room to spread out and do homework with books or laptops, or simply to sit back, relax, listen to music, read or scroll through messages or posts on a cellphone or tablet.

A smaller room nearby has art supplies. There’s a kitchen, as well, with a microwave oven to heat up meals or prepare popcorn and other snacks.

The new Teen Activity Center, opening next month in Old Town Fort Collins, “was built by teens for teens,” Mia Murphy proudly proclaimed.

Murphy, 18, is one of five youth engagement specialists with the Larimer County Department of Health and Environment. She’s been working on this project since she was a 16-year-old summer intern with the health department.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held Wednesday evening at the center, located at 212 W. Mountain Ave., and an open house with live music is planned for Saturday, May 13. The grand opening is scheduled for June 13, giving workers time to install carpet and other finishing touches, and The Center for Family Outreach to hire the staff.

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The roughly 1,500-square foot facility, located across the street from the Larimer County Courthouse Offices, is that “safe third space” local teenagers, mental health professionals and county health department leaders have been seeking for the better part of the past decade.

School and home are not always safe places for teens, they said.

“The main purpose of this center is to serve as a third space,” said Zach Ducharme, the youth engagement program coordinator for the county health department. “This third space is a place for teens to gather and build community that’s not school and not home.

“The modern third place is people’s cellphones, and so the teen center’s going to be an opportunity for teens to build community and connections with each other, with their peers, with their friends and seek out resources.”

Teens will have access to mental health resources focused on suicide prevention, substance abuse and other concerns in an accessible setting, Murphy said.

“The biggest things teens have said is that there are tons of mental health resources available, but it’s extremely intimidating to try to seek those out yourself, especially if you’re in a place where you’re struggling,” Murphy said. “So, being able to go to this teen center, where people are already there and already using these resources and to be able to go and actually be in a space that’s built by teens for teens, it’s a lot easier to access resources you need.”

The Teen Activity Center will also have resources available to help 13- to 18-year-olds search for and apply for jobs and volunteer opportunities and to connect them with recreational activities available in the community, Ducharme said. He’s working with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Larimer County to create a collaborative partnership that would include transportation to and from the center to one or more of its locations, where teens would have access to a gym, tennis courts and fields for outdoor games.

The four-room teen center is in the same building as The Center for Family Outreach in a space Fort Collins Police Services previously used for training exercises. It was used as a temporary homeless shelter early in the COVID-19 pandemic, said Laurie Klith, executive director of the outreach center.

The city of Fort Collins, which owns the building, completed $25,000 worth of exterior and entryway work to make the facility compliant with the American Disabilities Act before leasing it out for the teen center, Klith and Ducharme said.

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Funding for the facility for its first two years of operation is coming from a $466,000 grant from the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice’s Office of Adult and Juvenile Justice Assistance. The grant was awarded jointly to the county health department and The Center for Family Outreach, Larimer County Public Health Director Tom Gonzales and Klith said.

Poudre School District Superintendent Brian Kingsley, the Larimer County Board of Commissioners and Laurie Stolen, Larimer County’s director of behavioral health, all wrote letters in support of the grant, Klith said. That collaboration, Klith said, was critical to receiving the grant through a highly competitive process.

Data the county health department was receiving from its every-other-year Healthy Kids Survey, mental health surveys conducted by Poudre School District and the growing number of emergency room visits by youths to county hospitals arising out of behavioral issues show that facilities like this are needed, Gonzales said.

“We look at this, really, as the social determinants of health,” Gonzales said. “When everyone feels belonging, safe and has a sense of community, typically these other unfortunate health outcomes diminish because of that social environment and community connection.”

The county created a Youth Action for Health project in 2015 that brought teens together for weekly meetings about ways to improve youth health, “from trying to decrease substance use, to improving mental health to just creating a better sense of community among teens in Fort Collins,” Murphy said. They created a survey that more than 600 people responded to, and based on those findings, wrote a 12-page report outlining the importance of establishing a teen center.

And now they finally have it.

A leadership group of 20 teens, including Murphy, “from all demographics of this community” have been meeting since January to determine what the center will include, pick out furniture and plan out its programming, Klith said.

Kim Lipker, who worked as a family advocate in Poudre School District’s Department of Language, Culture and Equity for the past 10 years, was hired as the program development coordinator for the Teen Activity Center and has worked closely with Ducharme in getting it off the ground and determining what community resources they can bring to the center. The teens are leading the project.

“It’s very much a youth-led, adult-supported center,” county health department spokesperson Kori Wilford said.

This center, located where teens already gather in Old Town and easily accessible on MAX and other Transfort bus routes, is a pilot project, Gonzales said. Similar facilities could be established in Wellington, Estes, Park, Berthoud, Loveland and other parts of Fort Collins.

“We want to see how this goes, how much it costs, all the things around it and see how easy this is to duplicate and add other centers throughout the county. To provide this community of social connections for all youth is really the key here.”

Reporter Kelly Lyell covers education, breaking news, some sports and other topics of interest for the Coloradoan. Contact him at kellylyell@coloradoan.com, twitter.com/KellyLyell or facebook.com/KellyLyell.news. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Collins Coloradoan: Teen Activity Center to open in Old Town Fort Collins in June 2023