First look inside new Teen Empowerment building reveals 19th Ward’s promise

With room names like Creation Station, Spark Tank and Soul Cafe, the new headquarters of a 19th Ward organization is already leaning into its identity. The Center for Teen Empowerment’s building at 392 Genesee St. is still weeks from opening.

Its quick rise from an abandoned lot last fall to a spring opening offers hope the organization’s 20 years of history are only the beginning of a generational legacy.

On a recent drizzly day here, the center’s executive director, Doug Ackley, toured the modern, two-story, stone-and-glass building with a visiting reporter. It was his third walk-through that day, but Ackley was still eager to show it off. “It fits the community; it fits the fabric of the neighborhood,” he said in between shared smiles with contractors making final touches to the Barack and Michelle Obama Teen Empowerment Center.

Yes, that’s the building’s name — part of a generous financial gift toward the roughly $4.3 million project.

The donor insisted on the name, and Ackley is hoping the former president and first lady will make their way here for a grand opening celebration this summer.

The Barack and Michelle Obama Teen Empowerment Center almost ready

The Center’s staff of two-dozen or so plan to move in sometime in June, taking up modern office space on the second floor of the 6,400-square-foot building. Youth organizers — Black and brown teens from the homes and schools of the neighborhood — will fill the rest of the space with the ideas and actions meant to define their futures.

“When you see this, you get excited about what’s going on and what it’s going to be,” Ackley said.

Sliding by freshly painted walls and stacks of power tools, Ackley’s excitement filled the building, drowning out 90s’ rock playing on a portable radio.

The Soul Cafe: “You can’t just call it a kitchen; it’s more than that.”

The Spark Tank: “It’s the conference room where ideas start.”

The Creation Station? Ackley’s hopeful a few more donors will come forward — about $300,000 is needed — to outfit the room with furniture and equipment that will allow teen leaders and activists to create the media that connects with their peers, to record raps and spoken-word jams, to host creative-expression sessions, to have a space that nurtures “artivism — art as social change,” he said.

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'Young people need to be involved'

The building itself is an extension of that artivism. The architects and engineers, the contractors and construction crews, the designers and planners have all accepted input and guidance from the very teens who will take over the space, Ackley explained.

“They want this to be inviting and accessible,” he said. “Young people need to be involved; they need to be a part of this.”

Once opened, the building could see a few dozen people make use of it each day, planning neighborhood events, organizing calls to action and carrying on the hard work of community building started in an up-cycled storefront just across Genesee Street and visible from a grand second-floor terrace.

“We’re in the center of the neighborhood here,” Ackley explained. “And now we’ll be able to see even more the change around us.”

The presidential invite is for an August grand opening that will also serve as a 20th anniversary party for the center. Even if the Obamas don’t show, many of the hundreds of teens Ackley’s team has helped over the two decades will.

This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: First look inside new Teen Empowerment building in Rochester NY