New Community Center Opens in Silver Spring

Facility Offers Classes, Computer Labs

From left, resident Annabella Diaz, County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, resident Maria Castro, U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen, Gustavo Torres of Casa de Maryland and County Council member Steven A. Silverman cut a ribbon to open a community center in Silver Spring's Long Branch area. (By James M. Thresher -- The Washington Post)

In Silver Spring's Long Branch neighborhood, where about half the residents are Latino and 60 percent are foreign-born, a sense of community has been growing for years.

Last week, residents finally got their own gathering space, a brick-and-mortar symbol of neighborhood spirit at the Casa Community Center at Pine Ridge. After a ribbon-cutting ceremony Feb. 22, the center opened at 8615 Pine Branch Rd., in the heart of the Good Acre and Pine Ridge apartment complexes, home to about 500 families.

The center puts within walking distance meeting rooms, two computer labs and classrooms for studying math and English.

"I am so happy and so excited," said Gustavo Torres, executive director of Casa de Maryland, the nonprofit organization that is managing the center. "People who have been living in Long Branch the last 10 or 12 years, they never went to any community center that belonged to them like this. For the first time in their life, they have that kind of facility."

In the works for three years, the center is the fruit of collaboration among tenants, government agencies, private businesses and Casa de Maryland, the state's largest provider of services to Latino immigrants.

Tenant activists were inspired and determined to create a central meeting spot, said Dario Muralles, a Casa spokesman.

"It all started with the tenants organizing a couple of years back," Muralles said. "The tenants themselves saw the need for a center, kind of like a center of the community, where they could receive classes."

Casa de Maryland stepped in and helped secure a donated space in an apartment building from Kay Management Co., owner and manager of the two apartment complexes. The company agreed to lease 2,400 square feet on the ground floor of a building in the Pine Ridge apartments to Casa for $10 a year for 15 years, Torres said.

The community center idea attracted a broad array of partners from the private and public sectors who contributed $375,000 in grants, building supplies and goods and services. The money paid to remodel and outfit the space into five rooms, including two computer labs.

Among the contributors were the Maryland-National Capital Building Industry Association and housing development departments at the county, state and federal levels. The center's estimated first-year operating expenses, including utilities and other overhead, are being paid for with an $80,000 county grant.

Furnishings were provided by Ikea. The computer labs came from Microsoft and the Philip L. Graham Fund, a charity named for the former publisher of The Washington Post. The Barbara Bush Foundation awarded the center $50,000 to provide after-school activities aimed at improving children's math and literacy skills.

Such classes, available to neighborhood children ages 2 to 8, got underway within a day of the opening. Computer classes begin next week.

The center is open from 2 to 8 p.m., Mondays through Saturdays, with hours to be extended as funding permits. For more information, call 301-431-4185.