A group of Northview residents and organizers are calling on Manhattan to fund kitchen appliances for the community and recreation center under construction in the neighborhood and say suggestions to alternatively finance the equipment through grants or fundraising are “inequitable and unethical.”
But City of Manhattan officials say the money just isn’t available in the Eisenhower Community Center’s (ECC) budget and would require cuts to other facility amenities – though they aren’t writing off the possibility of installing the features in the future.
The Northview-based center co-located at Eisenhower Middle School is one of three recreation centers under construction in the city, and one of two funded by a 10-year 0.25 percent sales tax approved by voters in 2017 to construct the facilities and improve outdoor recreation facilities and trails.
The two sales-tax funded centers collectively come in at a nearly $17.3 million price tag. ECC and the center at Susan B. Anthony Middle School will have largely identical features including four athletic courts capable of accommodating basketball, volleyball and pickleball, a running track on half of the center, offices, storage, two multi-purpose rooms and space currently slated as a concessions area – the dedication of which has become a focus of neighborhood advocacy group Northview Rising (NVR).
NVR working group members Andrew Elliott and Dominique Saunders say since the beginning of the group’s involvement in advocacy around the ECC in Fall 2018, they’ve called for altering the center’s designs to be representative of the different needs and characters of their surrounding neighborhoods. In a letter to the Flint Hills Wellness Coalition (FHWC) asking for support, they specifically note Northview’s food desert status as cause for their push for including features such as a more extensive kitchen in the ECC.
“[C]ommunity members do not need a recreational center with a primary design focus on promoting sports tourism,” Elliott and Saunders write. “We need a functioning community center – a secular space to host not only recreation and sports, but things like food drives and distribution efforts, youth programs, flu clinics, cultural events, art classes, voter registration, basic skills and cooking classes, community development and improvement meetings, and adult programming, especially for the aging population in Northview.
“Lastly, we explicitly and repeatedly expressed that in order to meet our needs, the ECC needs a functioning kitchen.”
Northview is largely a working-class community and the most food insecure census tract in the city, according to the FHWC Riley County opportunity map.
NVR says its advocacy did lead to some notable changes, such as the planned multi-purpose rooms and a roughed in area with utility connections for the desired kitchen, but the kitchen appliances came in at a cost that did not fit in the project budget according to Manhattan Parks and Recreation Assistant Director Wyatt Thompson. He says the architect estimate for the gear came in at $30,000 to $40,000 – largely driven by a commercial-grade fume hood required by building and safety codes.
“[T]he steering committee did discuss that and kind of debated the pros and cons and the merits,” Thompson says. “And, ultimately at the end of the day the steering committee had a bucket of money that they were trying to work with and they could fit so many things within that bucket, fund so many of the amenities that they wanted, and the committee didn't feel that the upgraded kitchen was something that was a higher priority than the other things that they were dealing with at the time.”
Thompson says the final plan included funds for basic catering and concession equipment such as refrigerators, sinks and warming racks, but not the full oven and range, and was approved by the Manhattan City Commission in February 2019 following the approval of the design steering committee.
NVR’s Elliott and Saunders, though, say that committee’s formation was poorly advertised to the community and was poorly representative of the Northview community, with just seven of its 44 members residing in the neighborhood. They say NVR had been pursuing grants to finance the ECC kitchen amenities but changed their position after community fundraising was suggested to fund the project.
“It is NVR’s position that the city, not the Northview community, secure funds for the Eisenhower Community Center’s kitchen equipment in order to make this project both relevant and equitable in addressing the needs of the community,” they write. “To […] ask an economically marginalized community to spend additional resources to make a public project relevant is exploitative and unacceptable.”
Thompson did recall some conversation by residents about acquiring a grant and discussion of possible fundraising within the community at a steering committee meeting in late 2019, but says he wasn’t familiar with all of the details of grants or fundraising efforts raised during the meeting.
“That was also kind of around the same time that there was major community fundraising efforts going on relative to Johnny Kaw Plaza and relative to the Bluemont Hill Scenic Overlook – those were privately funded amenities,” he says. “And so, I think that was kind of the context that we were in and so that was [the conversation], could this be another privately-led effort to get those amenities?”
“I don't know if that's been pursued or not, but that's kind of what I recall of discussions with the steering committee and kind of what else was happening in the community that might've led to some of those suggestions.”
Following those interactions, NVR members began in 2020 to lobby city officials to seek funding for ECC kitchen equipment utilizing some of the nearly $3 million of COVID-relief support Manhattan received through the state’s SPARK Taskforce responsible for distributing dollars apportioned to local governments through the federal CARES Act.
City officials released information in October 2020 stating their plans for the funds included reimbursing costs to update telework and enhanced sanitation needs as well as rent and mortgage assistance for residents laid off due to the pandemic, public awareness campaigns on COVID-19 related topics, and marketing the Manhattan Conference Center in support of the travel and tourism industry.
Saunders wrote in email exchanges with Thompson as well as Assistant City Manager Dennis Marstall that the pandemic has exacerbated food insecurity in Northview and that a fully operational kitchen in the ECC would improve community response to increased needs. After a couple months of correspondence beginning in July where officials were initially open to the request, in September Marstall responded to Saunders saying the kitchen equipment was not included in their plans for the SPARK funds and he didn’t “see any federal guidance that would support it being eligible for SPARK funds.
“As you noted in your request, the “pre-existing, localized food insecurity have been exacerbated by the economic instability caused by COVID-19” highlights that the request focuses on an existing issue (food desert) rather than the impact of COVID 19,” Marstall writes. “Should we fund this project with SPARK funds and then be asked to return the funds, the City would have to find unbudgeted general funds to pay for this expense and lose out on using the SPARK funding for other eligible expenses.”
Saunders responded saying she believed that applying similar logic to rent and mortgage relief would make those expenses ineligible given housing affordability concerns acknowledged by Manhattan in its 2015-2019 consolidated plan, and again requested city officials continue exploring funding the project with SPARK funds or from another source “to more adequately address the compounding effects that the pandemic has had upon Northview’s food insecurity related inequities.”
Ultimately, though, officials in the City Manager’s Office did not change course and informed Saunders that the city is currently no longer pursuing funding sources for a full kitchen in the ECC.
“[S]ince this is being built as a recreation center, the primary focus is to get the recreational/sports amenities built and installed,” Marstall writes.
To NVR’s Saunders and Elliott, this signaled a lack of goodwill by city officials who they say showed little interest in equitability and civic engagement. In response, they’ve begun gathering support within the community to continue pushing for Manhattan to allocate funds for a fully operational kitchen in the ECC.
FHWC Chair Debbie Nuss says she and the coalition have agreed to support NVR in their efforts and that they are currently planning how and when to raise the issue formally with the Manhattan City Commission.
“This is not equitable treatment of the community, particularly if you know that the Anthony community recreation center already spent an additional $300,000 more than what they had budgeted because there was some additional earth work that needed to be done,” Nuss says. “And there was no debate about that at all.”
Food and Farm Council (FFC) Coordinator Vickie James agreed with the position of NVR, saying the community should not be responsible for raising funds for equipment intended to be available for public use and educational purposes. She says the FFC voted unanimously to support NVR as well.
“It’s not a clubhouse, it’s intended to be a public space that could have all sorts of value to teaching people these food skills,” says James. “Maybe there could be mobile distributions there, maybe that’s where extra produce could be gleaned from farms and picked up there in that neighborhood, educational lessons in how to do gardening.
“[T]hat is a very common thing to build out, to create in a community when you're trying to help people with improving their education and food skills, with preparation skills, buying skills, gardening skills, et cetera. That’s a norm and we haven't accepted that here as a norm.”
Thompson adds that though Manhattan is not moving on the project at this point, they’ve not completely written off its possibility in the future. Architects accounted for the weight of a commercial fume hood when planning structural supports and space exists for the equipment if it’s acquired some time down the line.
“Whether it's fundraised or [funded by] grants or a future city project, I think we're open to all those things,” Thompson says. “We just have to identify, you know, where the money's coming from and then how we get those amenities that are desired.”
Thompson says the dollar value of the equipment is beyond expenses city staff could authorize without city commission approval, noting that the issue could be raised with the governing body during budget considerations. He further indicated residents could push for the project through Manhattan’s citizen capital improvement project request program – applications for which are located on the city’s website.
“You know, it’s not always approved the first year, sometimes groups have to advocate and put things in multiple years in a row,” he says. “But ultimately, maybe there’ll be some agreement that there’s a need for this and the city can set aside some funds to do it.”
Originally posted at https://northviewnotable.substack.com/p/northview-advocates-push-city-funding
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