Annandale Community Center opens

The Annandale Community Center, now open, gives children a new safe place to get homework help, learn new things, and make new friends.

The center, at 7861-B Heritage Drive, is at the rear of the Heritage shopping plaza.

The Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington formed a new branch, the Annandale Boys & Girls Club, to operate an after-school program in the new community center.

The center will have a Power Hour homework help program for ages 6-12, Money Matters sessions for teens to promote financial literacy, a health and wellness program, the Smart Girls initiative focusing on self-esteem and wise lifestyle decisions for ages 10-15, and the Keystone program offering community services and leadership for teens.

Membership is $50 a year, but “no one will be turned away,” says Jasmin Richerson, the director of the Annandale Boys & Girls Club.

The Annandale Community Center is in a vacant storefront formerly occupied by CrossFit Annandale. It was funded by the Webb Cos., the owners of the shopping center, as part of a proffer agreement for the construction of the townhouses on the retail center’s rear parking lot.

The community center will eventually offer programs for adults on evenings and weekends. The types of programs will be based on residents’ responses to a survey and to comments at community meetings.

“One of my priorities is that this is the community’s community center and that the services we provide here are the services the community wants, the services they need – not what we think they need,” said Braddock Supervisor James Walkinshaw at a ribbon-cutting ceremony on March 4.

While the center is in Braddock, it’s across the street from Mason and will thus draw participants from both districts.

“The new Annandale Community Center represents a new investment in our community and especially an investment in our youth,” said Mason Supervisor Penny Gross. The  Boys & Girls Club also operates the Culmore Club in Bailey’s Crossroads.

Related story: New Annandale community center will host an afterschool program

“These community centers can not only change the lives of our youth but are so important in our community, especially after the past couple of years when we were isolated in so many ways,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Jeffrey McKay.

It will bring people together in a well-designed space that many residents will be able to walk to, McKay said.

Of the 850 students at the nearby Braddock Elementary School, more than 600 are walkers, noted Principal Keesha Jackson-Muir.

“We have been wanting a community center for our students for a very long time,” she said. “This means the world to us.”

Jim Almond, senior vice president of operations at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Washington, said, “Our mission is to inspire and enable young people, especially those that need us most, to reach their full potential to be responsible and productive and caring citizens.”