City community center will move from longtime Charles Street facility

The Cleveland Community Center in Fields Corner will leave its longtime space on Charles Street in May and relocate to what is now a Boston Public School building on Westville Street. Officials from the Boston Centers for Youth & Families and the public schools will explain the plan at a community meeting set for next Wednesday, March 21, at the center, which is located at 11 Charles St.

The community program will move into comparable space on Westville Street that was once called the Marshall Community Center and is now part of the Up Academy campus. The complex includes a pool, which will be one of the new programming options at the re-located facility.
Starting in May, the Westville Street site will be known as the BCYF Marshall Community Center, according to Sandy Holden, a spokesperson for BCYF. The Cleveland name — a reference to US president Grover Cleveland (1885-1889; 1893-1897)— will be discontinued.

The move is prompted by a larger Walsh administration plan that calls for the existing Cleveland facility to be used as swing space for BPS schools that need it. The first new occupant of the building will be Boston Arts Academy, which is now based in the Fenway. The academy will relocate to Dorchester for three years while a new building is constructed for its new home across from Fenway Park.

BAA’s headmaster was scheduled to meet with civic leaders at home.stead café in Fields Corner on Tues., March 13, to update the community on the school’s vision for its temporary home. That meeting was postponed by the winter storm that hit the region on Tuesday.

Holden said that the staff of the Cleveland center will be in place on Westville Street by May 1. She said that more information about programming at the new site will be explained in detail at the March 21 meeting.

More information will also be posted online following the meeting at: Boston.Gov/BCYF-Cleveland. 

As part of the transition at the Cleveland campus, the Boston Arts Academy will move into space now occupied by Dorchester Academy. In September, Dorchester Academy, a high school, will move into a building on McClellan Street in Dorchester that formerly housed the Endicott School.


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