TIGHT DEADLINE
Group looking to open youth centre.
A community meeting will take place next week to discuss plans for a youth and multipurpose centre.
The meeting will take place on Monday at 7 p.m. at the North Sydney fire hall and will include a presentation by Brian Barron of Third Day Grace Ministries as well as Dave Sawler of Undercurrent Youth Centre.
Third Day Grace Ministries has plans to bring Undercurrent Youth Centre, which has locations in Glace Bay and Sydney, to North Sydney.
“Cape Breton is in a crisis… we really don’t have a big centre for youth right now,” said Barron. “We can sure make our community is healthier and better and (this will) give our youth some hope and give them an opportunity, especially those who are living below poverty.”
The idea for a youth and multipurpose centre came after Barron returned to Cape Breton after living in Beachwood, N.B., where he was a pastor for eight years.
Plans for the centre began eight months ago when Barron approached Baptist Housing Inc. with the goal of working out a deal for the former Fairview school, located at the corner of High and Brook streets.
“I think the big thing is we want to provide a large enough space for different programming like an indoor skateboard park, a graffiti wall, and we wanted to provide programming for life skills as well,” said Barron.
Barron believes the location would be ideal for the centre.
“The location is perfect, our demographics show us that in walking distance in this community there are over 500 youth.”
Last week, Barron was given final word that Baptist Housing would give the church an opportunity to buy the building.
Barron has six weeks to come up with the $35,000 needed to purchase the building and property.
“It’s going to cost more than $35,000, there is a lot of fixing up that needs to be done,” said Barron. “We are not sure right now how much it’s going to cost in total to occupy it. The cost of this building and to get the keys and close the deal is about $35,000.
Aside from the youth centre, Barron said the building would provide space to house other community groups like a boys and girls club, air cadets, dance
school as well as provide some small office spaces.
“We have called a community meeting because we are just a small little group at this point — we’re here to help our youth,” said Barron. “This meeting could be part … of the solution. We’re all quite aware of what’s wrong in our community, but what can we do to make things better and this is a great opportunity for our whole community.”
“We want to kick off a fundraising campaign to start this project and the process will start with this public meeting,” said Barron.
For more information on the meeting visit the Third Day Grace Ministries Facebook page at www.facebook.com/thirddaygraceministries.