With an excavator waiting to come alive again and resume its work digging a foundation in the background, most of Rhode Island’s highest-ranking politicians joined local East Providence officials to throw some dirt and celebrate breaking ground on a project that has been long-awaited but only recently got enough support to take off.

Directly behind the Robert E. Rock Senior Center, on what used to be an open plat of land (located at 610 Waterman Ave.), a $16 million new community center of nearly 20,000 square-feet will be erected by next October.

“Once complete, the new East Providence Community Center will offer our youth, our families, older adults and civic organizations a place where they can thrive and continue to highlight the city’s mission of creating opportunities where residents can live, learn, work and play,” said Mayor Bob DaSilva.

The new center will reportedly offer multiple community services to kids and adults, including recreational programming, job training, health monitoring services, and community meetings. A key component of the facility will also be the ability to host out-of-school learning experiences for local students and digital literacy training. DaSilva added that the city was in talks with Roger Williams university, CCRI, and Rhode Island College to offer some higher education courses and trainings through the center.

Governor Dan McKee, who was in attendance, spoke of how the community center would be the latest in the more than 20 similar centers that exist in Rhode Island, and which are integral parts of his Learn365RI initiative that strives to expand access to out-of-school education for students.

“Everyone that lives in East Providence is going to be able to take advantage of that, including my granddaughter, Mabel James, that lives right around the corner with my son, Matt, and his wife, Laura,” McKee said. “So I'm not a Townie. I come from Cumberland. But it sounds like the center of the universe today is right here in East Providence.”

Third try was a charm
DaSilva said during the groundbreaking that the project had actually been many years in the making, as voters in East Providence had twice in the past two decades approved referendums to build such a community center. Both times, however, the plans never got off the ground.

“But today, they will be realized,” DaSilva said.

The project comes at a cost of around $16 million, all of which is coming from federally-dispersed funding sources and without any local taxpayer contributions or impact on the city’s budget.

The city is utilizing $10.43 million in funding from the State’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund (CPF) Community Learning Center (CLC) Municipal Grant program. The city received an additional $3 million in Congressional Directed Spending for the project from Senators Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, as well as former Congressman David Cicilline.

The East Providence City Council also approved an additional $3 million in local ARPA funds toward the project.

“We know, particularly in East Providence, when we put federal money in, it's an investment. It's not an expense. We get a lot in return,” Senator Reed said. “When this building is completed, it's not just going to be a place. It's going to be a focal point for the community of East Providence. It's going to be a place where relationships can grow and thrive.”

Lieutenant Governor Sabina Matos also added some thoughtful comments about why such centers were important.

“Now more than ever, we need to have centers like this. Centers in which our communities come together. Because there's so much division in our state, unfortunately, and in our country. And we need to have resources in which people are coming together to interact in person, not through social media,” she said. “It's so important that the location of this community center is right across from the senior center…there's the possibility for more collaboration between our youth and our seniors to ensure that there is joint learning happening. Because there's a lot that our seniors can teach our youth, and there's a lot that our youth can teach our seniors.”

DaSilva said that the center would need to be built by October of 2026 in order to satisfy the requirements of some of the funding sources it had received.