Here’s how Las Vegas Trail is closing in on its No. 1 need

LVT Rise, the committee formed by councilman Brian Byrd to revitalize the Las Vegas Trail area, is talking with the YMCA of Metropolitan Fort Worth about the concept of acquiring its Westside location and transforming it into a community center.

Through a town hall meeting and multiple public forums over the last five months, residents have pleaded that along with security and safety, a community center is a central need.

Beyond limited space in after-school programs, the area’s youths have few options for activities. Many come from single-parent and economically disadvantaged households in the apartment-lined neighborhood.

The Westside YMCA at 8201 Calmont Ave., is less than a mile east of Las Vegas Trail, and just a two-minute walk from Western Hills Elementary and Primary schools. It sits on five acres and has two outdoor basketball courts, a playground, large sports fields and a swimming pool. It is considered the most logical and cost-effective location to create the area’s first community center.

Residents believe a community center can become an anchor for the neighborhood and a source of pride. City officials like Byrd believe a center would in turn aid the city by providing day care and after-school care, plus educational and job training programs, and ultimately help to reduce crime in the area.

Tony Shuman, CEO of YMCA of Metropolitan Fort Worth and who also serves on the LVT Rise social services committee, said the YMCA would want to remain an integral part of delivering programs through the new community center if a deal is struck.

“We’d have a presence there and be part of the solution there,” Shuman said. “If that facility, that asset could help facilitate change on Las Vegas Trail, I think our board and our mission would push us toward participating.”

LVT Rise is said to be seeking to acquire the YMCA for a price up to around $500,000. Byrd said the estimate “looks reasonable.”

That price would come as a bargain. According to Tarrant County Appraisal District figures, the property was appraised in 2017 at $1.18 million.

The LVT Rise committee is forumlating plans to retrofit the two buildings that make up the YMCA. Because the buildings offer less space than desirable for a full-service community center, the committee is also considering expansion. Renovation and expansion costs have been estimated at about $2.5 million. An annual operating budget is estimated at $900,000.

One aspect LVT Rise has yet to determine is if it will ask the city to fund and operate the community center or seek private funds and operate it independent of the city, which runs 21 community centers throughout Fort Worth. Byrd, who favors steering away from city control, said he will make presentations to a variety of undisclosed foundations starting this month.

Byrd said a large number of local social services organization have already pledged to run programs at the community center.

A number of those organizations will begin to be visible in the Las Vegas Trail area starting in February or March when Catholic Charities of Fort Worth rolls out what it is calling a mobile community center. Catholic Charities CEO Heather Reynolds, who heads the LVT Rise social services committee, offered to provide a bus the organization owns and was considering selling because of a lack of use for it.

LVT Rise hopes to raise more than $16,000 to fund the use of the bus for six hours a week over five months. A variety of social services will operate out of the bus as it parks in front of apartment complexes. LVT Rise hopes to collect data that will help in determining programs to implement at the brick-and-mortar community center.

“After five months, we will have a full evaluation report that would tell us what was well-attended, what wasn’t, how did our advertising work, how did all of our efforts work and it would help guide our thinking regarding the community center,” Reynolds said.

Fort Worth police’s West Division Commander Cynthia O’Neil said a community center can work to keep teenagers and younger children off the streets, and reduce crime. She pointed to the success of the heavily used Como Community Center.

“One problem we have is there nothing really available for the younger generation to do but walk the streets,” O’Neil said of the Las Vegas Trail area. “ A community center gives them something more interesting to do, a place to go, but it also helps the adults in the area by providing different types of classes. Any time you put a community center in a community like that, it does feel more like a community than a transient area.”

The deterioration of the Las Vegas Trail area over the course of the last 25 years has gradually decreased the Westside YMCA’s membership. A large segment of its members are seniors, who can also be served by a community center.

The model studied by LVT Rise is Jubilee Park in southeast Dallas. The committee has visited the 20-year-old project twice, and Jubilee Park CEO Ben Leal said the creation of a community center for Las Vegas Trail residents would be “the first logical start” in a revitalization project.

“You need a place where people can convene, you need a place where people can come together and feel safe, secure and welcome. They need a place where they can find pride in,” Leal said. “Our residents take advantage of coming here because they know this is their community center where they can come to and have dialogue, have meetings, it’s theirs to use.”

Jubilee Park partners with the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas to offer year-round athletics programs.

This story was originally published January 10, 2018 at 10:52 AM with the headline "Here’s how Las Vegas Trail is closing in on its No. 1 need."