Special day for Southwood: $400,000 renovation offers new opportunity

Dozens of families from the Southwood Mobile Home Park in Albemarle County gathered Sunday afternoon to witness the dedication of their neighborhood’s newly renovated community center.

The $400,000 renovation of the community center was conducted by Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville and the Boys & Girls Club of Charlottesville/Albemarle.

“This says to the community, ‘It’s a new day,’” said the Rev. H. Miller Hunter Jr., rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Ivy, and a member of Habitat for Humanity’s board of directors. “It says, ‘There’s hope on the way.’”

Prior to the community center’s expansion, the building was a convenience store, a property manager’s office and a 400-square-foot space for Boys & Girls Club programs.

Now, the facility has three times as much space for the trailer park’s children and teens. It features bumper pool, flat-screen TVs, multiple computers, video games and more. Outside is a newly built full-size basketball court. Since the expanded center’s doors opened in mid-August, the number of children and teens who visit the facility daily has grown from roughly 30 or 40 to more than 70.

“It truly is a different place,” said Southwood resident Rose Glasgow, whose 10-year-old daughter Sharika drops by the center each day. “We love having it here.”

Glasgow said the Boys & Girls Club staffers’ efforts have helped her daughter turn around her grades from Ds and Fs to Bs and As.

“They treat her as if she was their very own child,” she said. “You can’t ask for better than that.”

Along with the expanded space for Southwood’s children and teenagers, the new facility also includes a meeting area for community groups. So far, it has served as a meeting place for a neighborhood watch group, an adult Latino soccer league and the Girl Scouts. The room is also hosting parenting skills classes by Children, Youth and Family Services, as well as classes for women by the Sexual Assault Resource Agency.

“This center over here is more than just a building,” said Dan Oakey, president of the Boys & Girls Club board of directors. “It’s a platform for opportunity.”

The new Southwood Community Center is the first piece of a major redevelopment of the 100-acre Southwood Mobile Home Park, which was bought by Habitat for Humanity in early 2007 for $7 million. Over the next six or seven years, Habitat intends to develop its plans to transform the trailer park into a high-density, mixed-income community.

Habitat for Humanity, which partners with low-income families to build affordable housing, has refocused its strategy away from building single-family homes in rural areas to building high-density, mixed-income housing within or very close to Charlottesville’s city limits.

The community center project was financed primarily through private donations to Habitat for Humanity and the Boys & Girls Club, though Albemarle County’s government chipped in $50,000. Contributions from several local builders, building supply shops and the architect also helped bring the project to fruition, said Ken Hankins, Habitat’s chief operating officer.

“It was a community effort,” he said. “But this is just the starting point.”