Lessons Learned While Building A Community Center

Last week The Community Center at Chatham opened to the public after three years of planning, praying, and building.  Reaction to the building was amazing, and ranged from "Wow" to "Now we can have exercise classes here."  Everything about this project went extremely well, and moved quickly.  But, I did learn some things in the process, and here's what I've gleaned so far:

1. Be prepared for criticism. When we were awarded $3-million to build the community center, I thought everyone would be thrilled.  Most were, but some very vocal opponents were quick with their criticism.  Be prepared for criticism when you undertake any community-wide project.
2. Get all the help you can. We hired a top-notch architectural and engineering firm, a good contractor, and our board made a lot of decisions.  One person could not have pulled this off, and I called on the expertise of board members, design professionals, and others every step of the way.  The best money we spent was to pay the architectural firm to manage the project and review all materials the contractor used.  Some suggested we manage the project ourselves, which would have saved us thousands of dollars.  But, it might have cost us tens-of-thousands of dollars in bad decisions.
3. Know how you will use the building before you design it. One of my favorite movie lines is from Field of Dreams when Ray Kinsella hears the voice tell him, "If you build it, they will come."  That's a great line, but building it isn't enough.  You have to know why you're building it.  In our case we knew the Boys and Girls Club would be the anchor program, so we designed the building to be managed by two people with clear sight lines into all rooms.  Form does indeed follow function.
4. Develop use policies prior to opening. We're behind on this, but we're catching up fast.  We were so focused on building the building that we lagged behind on use policies.  Fortunately, we're closed for a couple of weeks to put in the gym floor, so we'll catch up before we re-open.
5. Think about staffing and funding. We decided that we could not run the building with volunteers alone, so we hired an interim director and will add part-time staff later.  But we will use lots of volunteers to round out our staffing.  We're also raising money (we raised $26,000 at our gala grand opening dinner); we believe operating expenses will run $8-10,000 per month.  That's a lot of money to raise, but we plan a combination of individual and corporate donations, grants, user fees, and rental fees.  I'll let you know how this works as we move forward.

Someone asked me several weeks ago if I would do this all over again.  The answer is "Yes" because the Center has already exceeded our expectations.  But, I did learn some things, and next time it will be easier.  I hope.