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The town of Goshen held the first of two public hearings on the proposed community center last week at the Goshen Volunteer Fire Department, where members of the community heard information about the grant the town was pursuing to fund the project.
Jeremy Crute, a regional planner with the Central Shenandoah Planning District Commission who has been working with the town on the community center project, spoke about the Community Development Block Grant that the town is applying for to fund the construction of the community center, as well as the process up to this point.
The process began in 2021 when the town applied for and received a $50,000 planning grant to look into potentially developing a community center. A survey was conducted, with more than 90 percent of respondents saying they were in favor of a community center in Goshen.
From there, the town conducted a site study, looking at several locations in town as potential sites for the community center. The town also received $255,000 in congressionally directed spending in this year’s budget to help purchase property for the community center, with Town Council voting in January to purchase a lot next to the town’s rescue squad building as the site for the center.
The town is now looking to apply for a Community Development Block Grant of up to $1.25 million to help cover the cost of constructing the community center. These block grants are federal grants that, in Virginia, are issued through the Department of Housing and Community Development. Potential projects must meet one of three requirements in order to be considered for a block grant: provide services to low-income families, enhance the community or address an urgent need for the community.
“A lot of communities end up having to tailor the project or target the services to lower-income members of the community to meet those criteria,” Crute noted, “but in Goshen’s case, the average income is low enough that we already meet all three criteria. All of the improvements, all of the services and all of the outcomes of the project would be targeted and available to all members of the Goshen community and all members of the surrounding area.”
Among the services available for the community in the proposed center would be a health clinic, a senior center, YMCA, a food pantry and the town’s library. Several service providers, including the Rockbridge Regional Library, Valley Program for Aging Services, and the Rockbridge Area Health Center, who already provide some services to the town, have expressed interest in having space in the community center to continue to provide those services. The providers would lease space in the building with the rent they pay being put in a fund to be used for the upkeep of the building.
One of the benefits to the town of using a Community Development Block Grant to fund the project is that there is no requirement that the town match any portion of the funds for the project and no requirement that the money be repaid in the future.
“It’s basically a gift that has to be used for a specific purpose,” Crute said.
The deadline for the town to apply for the grant is June 1. Announcements of which projects will receive grants and how much they will receive will be made later this year, likely in the fall or early winter. If the town is awarded any grant money, it hopes to have the project under contract in the spring or early summer of 2024. Crute was confident that the town should receive some money from the block grant program.
“From everything we’ve heard, they’re very high on this particular project,” he said.
Several members of the public raised concerns over aspects of the project. Jeff Shaffer asked what would happen if the service providers decided to pull out of the project or leave town if they felt it wasn’t a viable option.
“I think if those businesses were viable, they’d already be here,” he said.
Goshen Town Council member Steve Bickley said that one of the things that the town was considering was having the service providers under contract to lease space in the community center before construction begins. He also clarified that, should they decide to leave, the responsibility for filling the space in the center would fall to Town Council.
“We’re pretty good at seeking out experts in the fields we need,” he said. “If it requires a commercial realtor to come in, we will go out and find a commercial realtor to help us. We will go seek out those experts to help us do whatever we need to do.”
Shaffer also questioned the results of the survey, noting that he didn’t remember filling one out. He asked if they were mailed to all the town residents and how many responses were sent in. Crute said that he wasn’t involved in the project when the surveys were conducted, but that there were 32 responses, or about 10 percent of the town’s population.
“And that justifies 91 percent in favor of this?” Shaffer asked. “This is all bogus as far as I’m concerned.”
Ruth Tolson, the manager for the Rockbridge Regional Library branch in Goshen, clarified that the surveys were also available at the library and other public places in town and weren’t just mailed to town residents.
“It was hard to get people to take the survey,” she said. “We tried, and we got as many as we could and mailed them in.”
Crute noted that 10 percent participation in the surveys was “about average.”
“I would love it to be a hundred percent participation,” he said.
Glenn Thompson noted that the town’s water system needed to be fixed and asked if there were any grants available for that. Crute said that there were, and that he and the town were in the process of applying for a grant through the Virginia Department of Health to conduct a study to determine exactly what would be needed to upgrade the water system.
“You are a hundred percent right,” Crute said. “Water issues are a major issue and we’re hoping to be able to pursue that as well. And the pursuing of this [community center] won’t take any resources away from trying to address the water issues.”
Bickley added that the town had requested $425,000 in congressionally directed spending for next year to be put toward upgrading the water system on Brattons Run.
Thompson also questioned the choice of location for the center, noting that that part of town flooded in the 1985 flood. He asked about property owned by the town next to the Dollar General and why the community center couldn’t be put there.
The site next to the rescue squad, Crute explained, was chosen to place the center as close to the majority of the town residents as possible.
“Since the purpose of this is to try to provide services for as many members of the community as possible, locating it as close to the center of town as possible is important to enable folks who may not have a car to be able to walk there,” he said. “Part of why this site is such a desirable site for this type of center is that it will be providing access for folks to get there and drawing more access to the center of town in the hopes of providing a bit more of a town center.”
Thompson commented that he was in that part of town every day and didn’t see many people walking around, and added that there weren’t many elderly residents in town who might need the center.
“Don’t get me wrong, I want to see a community center [in town],” he said, “but looking at the big picture, I just don’t think it will be utilized.”
Bickley said that there was already an indicator that some of the services might be utilized with the new cafe program that VPAS started in town in April. The organization was hoping for eight people to attend the first cafe, but ended up with more than double that number in attendance.
“With them, it seems like there is a need for those services and people are willing to use them,” he said. “I know it’s a small indicator, but it is an indicator that people do want these services and will possibly use them.”
Tolson clarified that the turnout for the program’s second meeting the first week in May was down to nine.
“It’s a new program and it usually starts high and you have to allow a certain amount of time to level it off,” she said. “It was a good turnout. You can’t beat that. We started at the library and had so many people come that we had to move it to the firehouse.”
Tolson added that most of the people at the first meeting came from Bath County due to the services VPAS offers not being available in the eastern part of the county. Bickley noted that that was part of the way the community center was pitched, that it wouldn’t just be for Goshen residents, but for the surrounding area as well.
“Goshen is a small town and may not be able to fill all these [programs] on their own, and we pitched it as a regional facility,” he said. “That’s why we’ve involved people from Bath County and Augusta County in some of these discussions that we’ve been having.”
The town will hold a second public hearing on the proposed community center at the Goshen firehouse at 7 p.m. on May 23. That hearing will center around the service providers and the services they will offer at the community center.
