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Mark Stebbins Community Center will bring children and family services to Manchester’s West Side

The Mark Stebbins Community Center, slated to open in fall 2026, will include the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Manchester and Amoskeag Health as tenants. (Rendering courtesy of the Mark Stebbins Community Center)

It would have been easy to size up Jason Yergeau as just another business person attending a public event. The director of electric operations for Eversource was among the dozens of people who packed a tent on a rainy day in June to celebrate the groundbreaking of the Mark Stebbins Community Center.

The public-private partnership on Manchester’s West Side, a project several years in the making, will be a hub for nonprofit organizations that will provide services to children and their families in a part of the city that has long been neglected.

The 20,000-square-foot center is under construction at the Kelley Falls apartment complex. Yergeau grew up just a few houses away on Upland Street. His father grew up in the apartment complex, and his paternal grandfather worked for Manchester Housing Authority, which owns the land on which the center is being built.

“It’s just going to be a beacon of hope for the West Side, all the services within walking distance. It’s just amazing,” Yergeau said while members of the Stebbins family, organizers and dignitaries donned hard hats and grabbed shovels to pose for photos.

Yergeau, who attended the now-shuttered Brown School and was part of the first third-grade class at Northwest Elementary, lived in the area for 16 years, from 1982 to 1998, and remembers it fondly.

“I had a lot of friends around Upland Street. It was a good neighborhood,” he said.

I’m glad I found Yergeau that day. My recollection of the area was a bit different. Back in the 1970s, Kelly Falls was known as the Rock Rimmon projects, and my mom raised me and my three siblings a few blocks away.

It was the place where you went hunting for your little brother’s bike after it got stolen, which I did early one Saturday morning, finding his brand-new Stingray lying on its side in a playground. I rode home with two bikes, steering my brother’s bike with one hand while I rode my 3-speeder, hoping no one would notice me and give chase.

I got over my fear of the neighborhood as a teenager, when I worked at Kimball Street Market, thanks to a high school friend who worked there and vouched for me. His family, also headed by a single mom, lived in the projects, and I got to know other kids who lived there.

Back then, the store, which sat at the southern edge of the neighborhood, was the de facto community center, the place where everyone met. We sold a lot of beer and cigarettes, though as a full-service grocer, we also sold plenty of meat, produce, bread and eggs.

The market was torn down many years ago and replaced with a couple of condos. The neighborhood is much quieter now and more hopeful than the one I remember, especially with the promise of a new community center.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Manchester will be among the nonprofits offering services there. (Amoskeag Health also will be a major player.) Had the club been operating on the West Side when my older brother and I were kids, we would have spent a lot more time there than we did at the Union Street clubhouse, which required a ride across town on a city bus.

Sally Stebbins talks about the Mark Stebbins Community Center, named in honor of her late husband, the long-time leader of PROCON, during a groundbreaking celebration June 17 in Manchester. (Photo by Mike Cote)

Capital campaign

The community center, slated to open in fall 2026, is named for the late Mark Stebbins, the third-generation leader of PROCON, a Hooksett-based architectural and construction management firm.

Stebbins, who died unexpectedly in 2021, visited me once at the New Hampshire Union Leader to talk about The Leader in Me, a program that had been introduced at Gossler Park Elementary School. Based on the late Stephen Covey’s management classic, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” the program had a knack for transforming shy kids into outgoing handshakers.

Stebbins’ enthusiasm for the program, which he had helped support, was infectious. He marveled at how a program with a modest budget was having such a profound impact, instilling confidence and leadership skills in elementary students.

“Maybe this is teaching us something,” Stebbins said. “That money isn’t the answer to everything.”

It’s the answer to many things, however.

Stebbins and his wife, Sally, have long been known for their financial support for a variety of community projects. The Stebbins family has contributed both money and in-kind services for the community center, which has been organized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

A capital campaign is underway to ensure not only that the center gets built but that it has enough funding to sustain operations. Visit markstebbinscommunitycenter.org for more information.