Fort Worth officials propose moving Southside Community Center to Hazel Harvey Peace Center
A proposal to move the Southside Community Center to the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods will be presented to the city council next week.
Residents attended a “Community Conversation and Update for the Southside Community Center” event on Monday night at Van Zandt-Guinn Elementary School.
The purpose was to give an another update on the National Juneteenth Museum acquiring the Southside Community Center and what will happen to the program and services housed in it.
Councilman Chris Nettles, whose district includes Historic Southside, presented a plan not just for the programs and services but the entire community center. He wanted to show residents there is a plan in writing that will ensure its purpose and legacy.
“It allows, number one, make sure the Southside Community Center does not lose its home, it does not lose its history, it does not lose its identity,” Nettles said. “It just moves to a developed location as well it will keep neighborhood services, code compliance, within the community housed in the same location.”
There are various programs and services that are housed in the Southside Community Center. These include Meals on Wheels, Best Years Club, after school programs, and special events.
It also holds partner programs such as the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program and is used for voting.
The programs will be housed on the first floor of the Hazel Harvey Peace Center for Neighborhoods located at 818 Missouri Ave. There will be three zones: zone one will be the community room for programs like Best Years Club, zone two will be environmental and house services like the fitness room and voting, and zone three will be Code Administration and house services like the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.
William Johnson, assistant city manager for the City of Fort Worth, said a resolution will be presented to the city council on Feb. 11 about the community center’s relocation and its support of the Juneteenth museum. The resolution will include allowing the city manager to move forward with executing a lease with the museum and allow them to proceed with their fundraising efforts.
The resolution will also include renaming the building as the Southside Community Center at Hazel Harvey Peace Center.
All the programs and services will stay at the Southside Community Center until the museum is completed.
“The one caveat is that none of these moves that we’re talking about are going to be happening until they are ready to start moving toward construction, so you won’t have the the center sitting there empty,” Johnson said.
In August 2019, the city council approved a plan for the use of federal grant funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which included $370,500 in Community Development Block Grant funds, for the Southside Community Center.
The plan for the community center included Americans with Disabilities Act improvements, building renovations, and a senior center conversion, which would help older Fort Worth residents patronizing the center, according to the agenda item.
An architectural firm conducted a 2022 report of the community center that detailed a number of challenges that would make it difficult to bring the facility up to the city’s standards and level of use for its community centers.
According to the council agenda on Aug. 27, the funds, which are required by HUD to be expended in a timely manner, were not being used. The city determined that renovations to the facility would not be the best use of city or grant funds.
Jarred Howard, CEO of the National Juneteenth Museum, received unanimous approval by the Historic Southside Neighborhood Association during a Sept. 9 meeting to move the museum’s location to where the community center stands at 959 E. Rosedale St.
The museum’s original location was to be on vacant land in the 900 block of East Rosedale Street. But Howard said the museum continued to search for the best long-term options for a site.
In a Oct. 28 community meeting it was recommended by city staff to move several Southside Community Center programs to various facilities in the community such as Hazel Harvey Peace Center, the Atatiana Carr-Jefferson Community Center at Hillside, and the Ella Mae Shamblee Library.
James Walker, president of the Historic Southside Neighborhood Association, said members of the neighborhood association were given a walk through of the Hazel Harvey Peace Center last week and came away impressed.
“We may not get a new museum from the ground up, but this is just as good, because it is a new building,” Walker said. “It’s brand new, it’s still within the community, the elders don’t have to leave the community in order to access the building, nor the kids.”
A representative of the museum said details on construction plans will be released in the future.
This story was originally published February 3, 2025 at 9:37 PM.
