Four youth centers were recommended under MAPS 4. Where will they be built?

Yahoo

10-03-2025

Citizen advisory board members recently recommended site locations in Oklahoma City for four youth centers under the MAPS 4 banner to provide after-school and summer programming.
As part of the voter-approved MAPS 4 sales tax initiative, the city plans to construct the four youth centers to offer new learning and social opportunities for children in high-need areas. The centers would host programs including athletics, the arts, family activities, and health and educational resources.
The Oklahoma City Council has approved allocating $78 million toward building the youth centers, with $30 million in additional funding toward operations and $10 million in capital improvement operating funds. Project designer Bockus Payne Associates Architects worked with the selected operator, Boys & Girls Clubs of Oklahoma County, to map major areas of need and study potential sites for the centers throughout Oklahoma City.
Architects with Bockus Payne last week recommended building the centers at 3403 S May Ave., 6440 S Santa Fe Ave., 1501 NE 36 and 7800 Melrose Lane.
Collin Fleck, a Bockus Payne design director, said the team developed a list of criteria for the sites, including youth density and poverty, crime rates, acreage size, floodplain maps, access to public transit, and school locations and performances.
'Most of those statistics were either provided by census data or by the Oklahoma City Police Department,' Fleck said. 'We also met with several stakeholders throughout the city public school systems and other public investors and partners to get as much data as possible. We wanted to make this as objective as we could, so that it wasn't just a gut feel on anything.'
Using the data, designers and planners narrowed down the site locations within four areas of highest priority:
The first site recommended is Woodson Park, 3403 S May Ave., which Fleck said is in the middle of the largest area of dense population, poverty and high crime in Oklahoma City.
But the park also has high visibility and easy access to several surrounding schools, with large capital investments already in existing infrastructure.
'From an amenity perspective, there's a lot already there, and that's something that we really are trying to get into all of these youth centers as much as we can,' Fleck said. 'Of course, budgets are tight. If we can have just a grass field, we'll have a grass field. If we have playgrounds, we'll have playgrounds. Of course, Woodson Park has all of those things already there, so it seemed like a really great fit.'
The second recommendation is what architects are calling the Santa Fe Site, at SE 66 and Santa Fe Avenue. The location is directly north of Webster Middle School and is just down the street from Southeast Middle School and Southeast High School.
Due to the site's proximity to Webster, Fleck said it could potentially share athletic fields with the school. He also suggested other existing facilities onsite, like the current gym, could be maintained and repurposed to help the budget.
"It is a large tract of land, it is relatively flat, it is highly visible, and, again, it checked all of the boxes for this area of need," Fleck said. "There's plenty of public transit."
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The third site is the existing facility located at 1501 NE 36, already operated by the Boys & Girls Club. The site currently serves kindergarten through eighth-grade students, although the operator is hoping to expand services to high school students as well.
Architects said that the Boys & Girls Club board members are willing to provide the site, pending further discussions. Nearly $6 million in private funding has already been invested into the facility.
"They have additional private funds that are going to be invested in the site to build the gym," Fleck said. "Again, looking at ways to make the budget square, we're looking for anything we can, and that is certainly a big help to have those funds allocated toward this."
Fleck said that the fourth recommended site — at Melrose Park, 7800 Melrose Lane — would place the new youth center in the highest square mile of crime in the city, according to 2022 police data. The park sits directly across the street from Council Grove Elementary School, with several other elementary schools, such as Greenvale, Apollo, Mayfield, Hilldale and Buchanan, identified within the boundaries of its area of need.
Fleck also said the city's Parks and Recreation Department intends to use $500,000 worth of general obligation bond funding toward improvements at the park. Those amenities would be available to the public generally outside of the youth center, but Fleck said they would be helpful for the site's purpose.
"There's an existing community center there, and in discussion with parks department, those facilities have outlived their useful lives, so we would recommend that the building be demolished and that the new building be built in the back of the park," Fleck said.
More: An ambitious MAPS 4 plan to improve OKC parks was approved. Which parks get what?
The MAPS 4 Citizens Advisory Board voted unanimously to recommend the proposed site locations Thursday.
Upon final approval from the city council of the sites, design services for the first MAPS 4 youth center will begin. According to the architectural contract with Bockus Payne, the current budget for that first design work is just under $1.4 million.
"I know it's a tremendous amount of work, and we've been talking about this and working on coming to this moment for years," said MAPS 4 Citizen Advisory Board Chair Teresa Rose. "It is exciting."
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: MAPS 4 advisory board recommends new youth center sites