A great deal of excitement surrounds a proposal by Kinston favorite son Lin Dawson to buy the former Sampson School and convert it into a community center. It sounds like a good idea to Sampson alum and presumably so to neighbors of the Tower Hill Road building. The big winner, though, could be Kinston.
The plan, if executed, could turn a white elephant into an asset along the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard corridor the city is working so hard to improve.
The city expects to spend more than $1 million on improvements to the corridor, a main entrance to Kinston from Greenville and parts north. A roundabout at MLK’s intersection with King has been completed. Scheduled are the demolition of about 30 dilapidated houses and improvements to street lighting, sidewalks and crosswalks. As for Sampson, the plan the city developed after a series of community meetings in 2009 calls for a six-foot-tall fence to shield it from view of traffic on the boulevard.
Dawson’s proposal — the result of the county school system relocating Sampson students to leased space last year and putting the school on the market as surplus property — would rehab Sampson, not just hide it.
Of course, a lot of things have to fall into place for a proposal to fulfill its potential. First, Dawson has to win the school in a bidding process that can drag on. If successful there, he faces the real challenge of raising the $750,000 he believes will be necessary to bring the old school fully back to life.
Why should Kinston residents who don’t live near or hope to use the community center root for its successful, or even help Dawson in his quest? A ride down Martin Luther King Boulevard provides the answer. An area beset by blight, it is a gateway to the city that hardly generates a good first impression of the city. It certainly does not generate the right response from people thinking about bringing businesses and jobs to Kinston. An old school left vacant or ill-used would only compound that poor image. A well-organized, active community center would add to the vibrancy the city hopes to create with its corridor improvements.
Too often, plans to benefit at-risk young people from the city’s poorer neighborhoods debut with fanfare and die on the vine. We don’t think that will be the case here, primarily because of Dawson’s attachment to Kinston and his record of success. A Kinston High grad who went to the NFL, became a minister, earned graduate degrees and now runs an organizational consulting firm he founded in Raleigh, Dawson brings serious credibility to his proposed project. That gravitas should not only be an aid in fundraising but in the equally important work of developing the programs that would make a community center worth having.
Judging from the single news report on proposed community center, Dawson has already put quite a bit of thought into his plan — who he wants it to serve, how the center would serve them and how much work (and workers) would that take. One other aspect we’d like him to consider: the wisdom of working with other youth service agencies here — the Gate, Salvation Army and Boys and Girls Club, primarily — to create something more rather than more of the same.
The MLK corridor needs help to reach its potential. So do the young people who live along it. A legitimate project that helps one or the other deserves commendation, but a project that helps both deserves community support.