South Bend breaks ground on new Dream Center, celebrates beloved King Center

SOUTH BEND — Seventeen-year-old St. Joseph High School student Tyler Brown has been coming to the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center his entire life.

There, throughout his childhood, Brown participated in summer camps and basketball teams and learned life lessons. Spending time at the center improved his life, he said. He remembers learning from and being impacted by the stories of adults he met at the center who "were in jail and changed their lives around."

"I grew up around the corner on O'Brien Street. I've been coming to (the center) since I was little," Brown said. "It feels like home."

This is why, he said, it is bittersweet that the center, built in 1973, is being torn down and replaced by the new Martin Luther King Dream Center. The Dream Center, which is scheduled to be complete summer 2024, will be nearly three times the size of the existing center, and offer new programming, resources and facilities to community members.

"It's not going to be the same, but it's going to be better," Brown said at a groundbreaking event for the Dream Center on Sunday, which would have been King's 94th birthday. "I might cry because I grew up here. I was kind of raised here. I spent a lot of time here."

Before the current King Center is torn down, community members signed its walls with their names and memories. "This place is my home," "Dreams come true at the center" and "I love this place. It is so, so, so fun," were among some of the phrases scrawled in colorful Sharpie markers on the cinderblock walls. Other community members signed the floor of the center's basketball court with their names and jersey numbers.

'A long time in the making'

The groundbreaking event on Sunday at 1522 Linden Ave. comes after more than a year of planning.

The city set aside $11 million in American Rescue Plan funds for the Dream Center project and organized several community meetings last winter and spring to explore ideas for the new center.

Fundraising commitments and additional money allocated from the city's general fund bring the project to an estimated $19 million. Aaron Perri, director of South Bend's Venues, Parks and Arts, said his team is still raising money for exterior spaces, furniture and other equipment to come in later stages of the project.

South Bend Mayor James Mueller first announced intentions during his 2021 State of the City address to invest in the center as a part of a broader plan to revitalize the city's Linden Avenue corridor. With about 16 months of work ahead, Perri expects the center will open in the summer of 2024.

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The plan calls for a new building and revitalized grounds at the site of the existing center. City leaders say they hope the Dream Center will spur additional investment in the area and some efforts, including a Linden Avenue streetscape project, are already in the works.

"The west side has a very unique story, and this area in particular has been underinvested," said Jordan Gathers, deputy chief of staff to the mayor. "This has kind of been a long time in the making. We're looking forward to being able to invest in our people."

Perri said planners wanted to honor the center's signature programming, basketball, while also adding new experiences like yoga, podcasting, digital video editing and more.

The building, which will retain the Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center name, will be two stories tall. Those involved in project development have created space for a variety of indoor and outdoor experiences recognizing that South Bend is a "four season city," Perri said.

The new center will feature an indoor track, fitness center, multimedia audiovisual production room, computer lab, financial literacy center, yoga and dance studio, indoor playground, rooftop deck, and two full indoor basketball courts. Outside, there also will be a splashpad, playground, multipurpose athletic fields, several basketball courts and other signature park spaces.

"I'm excited. The new center is going to have so many new facilities and things that we definitely will need and I think that the community will be very grateful for," Madison Jackson, a Ball State University junior who grew up visiting the center, said. "There will be more and more things for the community to do, things they might not be able to do or afford otherwise, like play volleyball or play soccer."

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When complete, the community center will be the largest building of the Venues, Parks and Arts portfolio, Perri said. It comes following several years of significant investment in city parks. Features like a new commercial kitchen were driven specifically from community feedback.

"In a way, I like to think of this as our capstone project," Perri said. "This project is more than just the sum of the bricks and mortar that's going into it. It's the hopes and dreams and vision of the community."

'We're just getting started'

City leaders say they hope the project serves as a catalyst for additional development in the Kennedy Park neighborhood. South Bend Councilmember Henry Davis, who represents the area including Kennedy Park, said he is excited about the jobs and opportunity brought by the new center, but he stressed that there's more to be done.

He sees a need for greater housing, grocery options and private investment in the west side neighborhood and called the new Dream Center "strictly a baseline."

"This is nothing to go to the bank with and say we made it," Davis said. "We're just getting started."

Still, at the groundbreaking ceremony, Davis called the Dream Center a "win for the community." As a child, he remembers playing basketball at the existing center, which was "just down the street" from where his father and uncles grew up.

"It was a safe haven," he recalled.

Jasmine Brown, whose father Samuel Brown ran an adult men's basketball league at the center from 1985 until 2002, also fondly remembers growing up at the center. She said she looks forward to the revitalization and new energy that the Dream Center will bring.

"(My dad) was doing the league in 1985, and this building is in the same condition as it was then," Brown said. "Imagine, 40 years of not paying attention … That's what going on here."

She said she hopes the new center will help rebuild and unify the community, as well as offer new programs and opportunities for children, adults and seniors.

"As a participant in the summer league for so many years, it gave me a place to run around and feel like home," Brown recalled. "I'm hoping that the new center does just that as well, but I'm hoping that it's bigger and better, and it opens doors to more individuals … and I hope it brings what I had: A home away from home."

Through the duration of the construction of the Dream Center, all existing center programming and employees will continue with Venues, Parks and Arts. Most programs typically meeting at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center are being offered through the Charles Black Community Center and O'Brien Center.

Venues, Parks and Arts will share progress updates and program notifications through its website and social media pages, Perri said.

Email Tribune staff writer Carley Lanich at clanich@gannett.com.

Email Tribune staff writer Claire Reid at cereid@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: South Bend breaks ground on new Martin Luther King Community Center