By Vinaya Saksena

CENTRAL FALLS- A major community institution is back in action, after almost a year of relative inactivity as its headquarters underwent renovations, and some new attractions have been added to the site.

The management of the Ralph J. Holden Community Center and Channel 1 have announced that their headquarters on Cowden Street is open for business once again, with long-awaited renovations to the facility nearly complete. Executive Director Angelo Garcia also said the center had received a $150,000 grant from the Champlain Foundation, which he said came as a valuable last-minute boost as his organization regroups and attempts to top its former accomplishments.
“I was ecstatic,” Garcia said of receiving the grant. “I literally pinned it to my shirt and wore it all day.”
There was, however, no time for a prolonged celebration, as Garcia and the center’s staff of thirty-three are looking to step up the center’s game with new features and program offerings. Among the foremost efforts taking place there is an attempt to bolster school wellness initiatives with a focus on helping visitors, particularly children, make healthy choices.
“We’re stepping up our physical fitness program,” Garcia said. “There’s a movement here to look at sedentary behavior. We’re also taking a different approach to a lot of the snacks that we offer. If we give the kids pizza every time we have an activity, that’s kind of counterproductive.”
Another nutrition-oriented feature that will be added to the Holden Community Center’s bag of tricks is a fruit and vegetable market, which will be on site and open to clients twice a month. This initiative, which Garcia said was given a pilot run in November, will see a vendor selling fresh produce at wholesale prices on the first and third Saturdays of every month. Garcia said he felt such an offering would be valuable for the community, as no conventional supermarket such as Stop & Shop or Shaw’s exists in the city.
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“It’s hard right now, because we don’t have a local market, per se,” he said. “So folks have to go outside the community to get that stuff.”
Garcia said he hoped these efforts would help combat the increasing prevalence of obesity among urban youth. He added that Channel One would be partnering with Johnson and Wales University to bring demonstrations on nutrition and menu planning to the center.
The center has also received $1,000 from the city’s recreation fund and the Ralph J. Holden Scholarship Fund, which will be used to help needy youths who need financial assistance to pay for membership. Garcia said the center tried to keep membership costs low to begin with- current yearly rates are $50 for adults and $25 for youth and seniors. However, he said that as a Central Falls resident himself, he recognized that money is quite tight for many families, and thus, the center has been willing in some cases to at least partially waive membership costs.
“Living and working here, I know it’s not the richest community in the state,” Garcia said. “(But) we find that the parents are okay with (the fees). There’s this misnomer that all of us are on welfare.”
The center has undergone several improvements as well, with a cardio fitness room, a youth drop-in center and new locker rooms connected to the indoor swimming pool area having been added. Other new features include a “state of the art” kitchen and eating area and an elevator for handicapped accessibility, though the latter was still pending inspection as of press time.
Garcia said the center was seeking to bring back old members and attract new ones, and that donations are always welcome to help keep its various programs up and running. The Champlain grant, he said, would help pay for new flooring, lighting and painting of walls and ceilings. The center will be open six days a week once the work is completed.
At the moment, Garcia said he was overwhelmed with the demand for the center’s offerings, particularly from children, but said it felt good to have that demand at the same time. He said the center’s management was considering offering some programs in school buildings in the future to meet the rising demand.
“We are looking at trying to get everything done,” Garcia said. “We hope to be the cornerstone of the community when it comes to service. It’s great (here), but I feel we’ve already outgrown it. It gets very busy.”