Fayetteville's Murchison Road community center could offer 'crucial' services for youth
As the city works to transform the Murchison Road area, officials are finalizing the first step in bringing a community center aimed at Fayetteville’s youth to the neighborhood.
Chris Cauley, director of economic and community development for the city, said Wednesday the project will be funded by $1 million from the American Rescue Plan Act. Cauley presented an update on the center at Monday’s City Council work session, along with his recommendation for the nonprofit to run the center.
Two nonprofits — Way2Real and United Ministries in Christ Church — submitted proposals to the city, Cauley told the council. He recommended that the council approve Way2Real’s proposal for the center, but some council members said they weren’t happy having to choose for fear of deterring the nonprofit not chosen from future participation in city efforts. City Manager Doug Hewett ultimately pulled the vote on the community center from the agenda.
What happened Monday?
Cauley said Wednesday that the disagreement at Monday’s meeting was proof of the city’s progress.
“This scenario really is a victim of our own success,” he said.
In years past, with projects like the Manna Dream Center and the city’s new Day Resource Center, only one organization submitted a bid, so the City Council didn’t have to make a choice, Cauley explained.
“In this scenario, we have two willing nonprofit partners who are both saying, ‘Hey, give us a little bit of resources and we’ll do this great thing,’” he said. “That’s pretty cool.”
Cauley said he should have made his reason for recommending Way2Real more obvious in his Monday presentation.
“My presentation showed that while these two nonprofits are fairly similar in nature, one of them has a much more robust business plan,” he said. “I thought that my recommendation for why and who I was picking was clear because of that.”
What would the center do?
The proposed center would serve three purposes, according to Cauley’s presentation: provide low-cost mental health services to community members, establish a youth and teen enrichment center and create a tutoring program.
Though only two of those ideas are programs traditionally geared toward youth, Cauley said Wednesday that the mental health services the center would offer are also crucial for that age group.
“That’s where we’re having a lot of the challenges in our community and that’s where a lot of the community violence is coming from,” he said.
Both nonprofits suggested a vacant building at 2400 Murchison Road, the former site of the Christ Cathedral church, as the future space of the center, according to Cauley’s presentation. The Century 21 real estate company's website shows the two-level, 10,000-square-foot building listed for sale for $699,000.
Cauley said applicants for the funding were only asked to pick an available space in the Murchison Road area, but no matter where the center ends up, the city will pay for the building and the nonprofit running the center will handle everything else.
“The nonprofit’s responsibility, it ain’t easy and it ain’t cheap,” he said. “It’s a substantial commitment from a nonprofit to say, ‘Hey, we’re going to use this facility for 20 years and do the things that you want to see done in it.’”
Way2Real and United Ministries in Christ Church had to agree to a 20-year commitment to the space and regular monitoring of the center’s operations by the city to apply for the funding, according to Cauley.
Way2Real was established in 2021 and offers crime prevention programs, career opportunities, a tutoring program, veteran assistance, counseling services and more, according to Cauley's presentation. The nonprofit is run by Dr. Tony Haire, who Cauley said has extensive experience in working with at-risk youth. Haire could not be reached for comment.
According to Cauley's presentation, United Ministries in Christ Church was established as a nonprofit in 2020 and offers professional and spiritual counseling, prescription co-pay assistance and a youth development program.
Derrick Montgomery, 41, the church's founder and pastor, said Friday that he began his ministry in 2009 and merged it with another ministry for five years, then returned to United Ministries in Christ's original structure in 2018.
"We spend the majority of our resources in helping our community," he said. "We've been doing that since conception."
The church currently hosts Sunday services and runs its community programs out of the Rhonda's Rainbow Family of Dance building in the Haymount neighborhood at 1015 Clarendon St., Montgomery said.
"We have a whole plan for what we want to do once we've gotten to the ideal location in the community," he said. "This gave us the opportunity to partner with the city to do what we have always done."
Next steps
Cauley said Wednesday he is waiting to hear if the two nonprofits could partner to run the center, as was proposed by Councilman Derrick Thompson at Monday’s meeting.
“I’m hoping that they recognize that they both bring something unique to the table and that taking ownership of this building is a lot of responsibility,” Cauley said. “And if they could share in some of that, all the better.”
Montgomery said Friday that his ministry does not want to partner with Way2Real to run the center because they already share space with Rhonda's Rainbow Family of Dance and want more independence at their next location.
"We are interested in partnering with the services that Way2Real offers," he said. "We want to do that, but sharing an infrastructure or a building would not be ideal for what it is that we're trying to do."
Should they not be offered the opportunity to run the community center, United Ministries in Christ Church will continue its current work and keep searching for a new building, Montgomery said.
The city manager will determine what happens next, Cauley said. A vote on who will run the center could be discussed in a future work session or simply be put on a meeting agenda for a consensus, he said.
Once the decision is made on who will run the center, the next steps of acquiring the property, making necessary repairs and designing what the center might look like can begin, Cauley said.
One of the city’s goals is to receive a $30 to $50 million grant from the Department of Urban Housing and Development only awarded to three or four cities a year, Cauley said.
“It’s very, very competitive, and we’ve told council that it could be several years of submitting for that grant before we win it," he said.
Having a community center like this could make all the difference, Cauley noted.
“If we keep doing stuff like this every year, we get more and more competitive,” he said. “This is an effort for us to be competitive in that grant process.”
Government watchdog reporter Lexi Solomon can be reached at ABSolomon@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Murchison Road community center in Fayetteville, NC aimed at teens
