COLUMBUS, Ind. — A southeast Columbus community center is preparing to reopen with new leadership.
As with many businesses, restaurants and nonprofits, the America and Roby Anderson Center officially closed last March in an effort to keep the COVID-19 pandemic from spreading, board chairman Dascal Bunch said.
“I understand why they closed down,” Bunch said. “Some people would have still come over every day to drink coffee with no mask or protection.”
But for several months before the novel coronavirus emerged, the facility at 421 McClure Road was being underutilized, board member and Columbus City Councilman Tom Dell said.
The Anderson Center was usually open for private rentals, as well as for a meal site, Dell said.
But a number of former board members resigned after moving out of the neighborhood or becoming involved in other work or community activities, according to Dell and new board vice-chairman Beth Turner.
Suddenly, there were few people willing to staff the center on a regular basis, Bunch said. The facility’s last paid employee, Sue Lamborn, left in 2015 when the building was still called the Eastside Community Center, he said.
While the building had been sealed up for quite some time, efforts to reopen and revitalize the center were put back on track in late summer, Bunch said.
Bunch and Turner were recruited as the top officers of a new board of directors that also includes Dell, Matt Ortman, Rick Roberts and Jessica Taylor. The names of the new board members were put on the lease of the city-owned facility on Sept. 22, Dell said.
“It was something that was happening so fast it made everybody’s head swim,” said Bunch, who described the center’s new leaders as an all-volunteer, working board.
One of the first steps undertaken by the new board was to ensure that someone would be in the Anderson Center most days between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m., Bunch said.
For more on this story, see Wednesday’s Republic.
