Construction officially began Friday on a $14 million youth recreation center in Paterson's 1st Ward, as Mayor Andre Sayegh joined leaders from the New Jersey Community Development Corporation for a groundbreaking ceremony at 54 Front Street. The new facility will more than triple the space of the youth center it replaces, giving the city's teens a 40,000-square-foot home with a gymnasium, STEM lab, animation studio, gaming suite, and multiple community rooms.
The groundbreaking, documented on Instagram
, marks the formal start of physical construction on a project years in the making. As
Jersey Digs
reported that the expanded facility will include planned spaces and allow NJCDC to expand its services.
From American Legion Hall to a Teen Megacenter
The Front Street site has a longer history than Friday's ceremony suggests. NJCDC purchased the property's former American Legion Hall in 2016 and opened the original Great Falls Youth Center at 52 Front Street in 2018, according to the same Jersey Digs report. That building underwent an expansion in 2023, adding multipurpose space and a podcast studio before city leaders decided the neighborhood needed something bigger still.
That bigger vision now carries a price tag of $14 million, with $10 million coming from NJCDC and $2 million allocated by the City of Paterson through the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, the outlet reported. The project's estimated cost was revised upward from an earlier $12 million figure to $14 million. Construction is expected to wrap with an opening in September 2027, creating eight full- and part-time jobs and requiring roughly $500,000 a year to operate, funded through city partnerships and donations.
A College Pipeline Built Into the Building
The new center will do more than house a gym and game room. In October, William Paterson University announced a formal partnership with NJCDC to establish what it's calling William Paterson University College Central inside the facility, according to William Paterson University. The program will offer college application workshops, FAFSA guidance, instant decision days, and dual-enrollment opportunities aimed at local high schoolers and community college transfers.
That kind of on-site academic support addresses a gap that state survey data has already flagged. Results from the New Jersey After 3PM survey, released in January, found that one in three high school students statewide said they would participate in an afterschool program if one were accessible in their community, per the New Jersey Community Development Corporation. Paterson's economic realities make that access especially urgent: the city's poverty rate is 24%.
Part of a Broader Push for Youth Spaces
The Front Street project isn't happening in isolation. Earlier this month, the Paterson Police Department launched a dedicated youth boxing and fitness space at the Paterson Community Center, using community resource officers to train local kids, as reported by News 12 New Jersey. Hoodline previously covered a related police-backed effort, a new boxing gym launch.
Whether the new Front Street center's projected $500,000 annual operating budget and eight-person staff will be enough to sustain its expanded footprint once it opens in 2027 remains to be seen, but for now, the groundbreaking marks a tangible step toward giving Paterson's teenagers a much larger space to call their own.
