A New Life For Libby Vintage School Building Has Become Libby Center, An Activity Focal Point For The East Central Neighborhood

Libby Center is slowly perfecting its split personality.

Retired in 1993 after 65 years of service as a junior high and middle school, the handsome, buff-colored brick building in the East Central neighborhood has since been refurbished and reborn. And in the 18 months since its post-retirement reopening, Libby Center has assumed several new roles.

Today, it is home to School District 81 programs for both gifted and developmentally impaired students, and to the school district’s Homework Support Center.

In summer, it houses the East Central Community Center’s activity program for children. And Libby Center regularly hosts such community groups as the Men’s African American Academy.

Soon, it will embrace an ambitious new role. A long-awaited teen center is scheduled to open at Libby Center later this month.

“When they closed Libby Middle School, we were concerned that something viable still be in the neighborhood,” said Mel Carter, a longtime East Central resident and business owner who has been instrumental in turning the dream of a teen center at Libby into reality.

“We’re trying to create a place for normal things - dances, pool, ping-pong, the gym. A place that’s drug-free and gang-free for kids to come and hang out,” Carter said.

“We also want to encourage parent involvement.”

Libby is located in one of Spokane’s most ethnically diverse neighborhoods. The two-story building sits one block south of Sprague at 2900 East First.

Built in 1928, Libby is bordered by auto repair lots, scrap metal yards and blocks of frail wooden houses.

As part of its transformation, the building has been spiffed up with new paint, carpeting and computers.

Dianne Jennings, director of the East Central Community Center, marvels at the changes the school district wrought at Libby. “It’s a brand new building. When it was a school - it was shot.”

By day, Libby now serves 125 gifted and developmentally impaired students from all over District 81. By night, it houses the Homework Support Center, administered by the school district. The center’s lights burn four evenings a week, Monday through Thursday, from 6 to 9 p.m. Kids drop in to spar with tutors, tackle the computers, type papers or get help with homework.

“About two-thirds of the kids who come here live in the neighborhood,” said Rick Jordan, the homework center’s director.

Matthew Keplin and Josh Porter, both seventh-graders at Chase Middle School, live a block from Libby Center. Three or four times a week they buddy up and visit the homework center - backpacks slung over their shoulders.

“I come here if I need help, math mostly, or to play on the computers and stuff,” Matthew said at the door. Inside the center, Matthew sat in front of a keyboard, happily intoning ba-doop-be-doop-be-do, while he played a computer game.

“Four of the kids here are from one family,” Jordan said, surveying the kids in the brightly lit room. “They live across the street. Their mom is real happy to have the center.”

Five to 15 kids use the center every night it’s open, Jordan said.

Two Saturdays each month, a group of 25 boys, age 12 through 14, meets in the Libby lunchroom. They are members of the Men’s African American Academy, said Ivan Bush, equal opportunity officer with District 81. At the group’s meetings, Libby’s cafeteria, computer room and playfield have become staging areas for talking, learning and rites-of-passage, Bush said.

East Central Community Center’s children’s program at Libby was a success, Jennings said. “The summer program housed about 45 kids. We had arts and crafts. We organized games. We went on excursions,” she said.

During November’s ice storm, Libby opened its doors to 325 people who found comfort in the heat and light offered there.

“We had quite a shelter,” said Bob Irish, the school custodian. Irish and head custodian Len Wavra did double shifts during the crisis to keep residents comfortable.

This month, the new teen center, sponsored by the Police Activity League and managed by the YMCA, will open at Libby Center.

Carter and Paul Kennedy, a vice president with U.S. Bank, will finally be able to do a bit of back-slapping when their 4-year-old dream is up and running.

“We’ve been working on this for I don’t know how long - long enough for World War Three to be started, fought and won,” Kennedy said.

Still some neighbors feel Libby Center can never be the community hub it was when Libby was a middle school, when neighborhood kids walked to class or popped a fly ball across the grass covered playfield.

Yellow school buses halt in front of the 69-year-old brick building in the mornings and afternoons. But today students come from all over Spokane to participate in the center’s programs.

“It (Libby) is in the neighborhood, but it’s not like it belongs to the East Central neighborhood because it doesn’t anymore,” said Eileen K. Thomas, who lives four blocks from Libby. All five of her children attended Libby Middle School.

Neighborhood children are now bused to Chase Middle School, about three miles away. That’s too far for Thomas’ liking. And Libby is not available to the community until after 6 p.m., she said.

Jerry Numbers, a member of the East Central neighborhood steering committee also mourns the loss of the middle school.

“I know some kids from Grant go down there for the gifted program. And District 81 uses it, but that does not make it a community organization,” Numbers said.

“Libby had a lot of good things going for it - that was all lost. People are no longer connected.”

However, Numbers acknowledges the middle school was never well situated, given its proximity to industrial and commerical areas.

People like Kennedy and Carter, who have helped create the soon-to-open teen center, and even some of Libby Center’s teachers are hoping to reestablish the link between Libby and the neighborhood.

Last spring, Jayce Keeling, who teaches classes for gifted children at Libby, took a walk around the neighborhood with her sixth-grade students. They knocked on doors and presented anyone who answered with planters full of sunflower seedlings.

Libby Center officials believe that the students who attend Libby have something to offer the community.

The head of the Libby Center Workshop, Bill Fyfe, will sell anyone who walks through Libby Center’s doors a wooden car for $2, an apple planter for $5, or a huge A-frame birdhouse for $7.

The items are made by a group of very special kids, Fyfe said. Many students with behavioral problems have found success working in Libby’s large, remodeled wood shop.

“Most of these kids have really struggled sitting in school eight, nine, 10 years without academic success,” Fyfe said.

“They get to work with their hands. It gives them a lot of satisfaction. I’ve seen a lot of kids turn themselves around,” he said.

And school officials are hoping to turn some of Libby’s detractors into fanciers.

When the teen center opens, “gets its feet under it,” those who don’t think the building serves the neighborhood may change their mind, said Ned Hammond, planning director for District 81.

Libby’s new role in the neighborhood is still growing. The old neighborhood school is gone. So what remains?

Possibilities, Carter said. Lots of possibilities.

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MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LIBBY’S ROLES School District 81 programs for both gifted and developmentally impaired students. A meeting place for community groups. Homework Support Center: open 6 to 9 p.m., Mon. through Thurs., 353-4462. A Teen Center is scheduled to open in April.