Barbell Club May Rise Again

When Darrisha McIver walks by the abandoned city building that once housed Hill Youth Cooperative Services (HCYS), she remembers jumping double dutch as a kid, staffing ​“The Store” full of after-school snacks, and growing up to become a camp counselor kids looked up to.

She also sees a hope for the future: a rebuilt community center where neighborhood kids can build confidence and learn life skills, the way she once did.

HCYS, colloquially known as ​“the Barbell,” served as a hub for young people in the heart of Trowbridge Square at 158 Carlisle St., from its inception in 1972 to its closure around 2008, reaching multiple generations of McIver’s family in the Hill.

Now, at age 33, McIver is working with current and former Hill residents to revive the Barbell youth center. She’s raising money, making plans, and garnering local support at a time when kids are struggling with the emotional and academic ramifications of the pandemic, gun violence in the Hill and around the country has continued to experience a Covid-spurred surge, and other New Haven community centers like Dixwell’s Q House are making a comeback.

The Barbell building has sat empty since 2008, despite some attempts to repurpose it, partly due to a requirement in the building’s deed that it be used for youth and recreation services. The stately, brown-brick structure now sports white graffiti along its outer walls. Its windows have been boarded up.

From when she was 5 until the age of 15, McIver spent afternoons and summers at the Barbell. From ages 16 to 18, she was employed there as a junior youth worker.

McIver today runs her own event-planning and accessory companies, and works as a custodian at Yale. She’d been mulling the idea to resurrect the Barbell for a few years before running into Kaye Harvey, who ran HCYS from 1996 to 2007. 

The pair discussed the prospect of restarting the Barbell. Harvey immediately decided to assist McIver. A friend of McIver, Shauniqua Davis, soon joined their efforts. The group has enlisted help from the Community and Economic Development clinic at Yale Law School to navigate the process of leasing the building and establishing a nonprofit. 

They expect that renovations for the now-dilapidated city-owned building will cost $2.5 million. 

As they hammer out a business plan, crunch numbers, and work through initial legal steps, McIver, Davis, and Harvey have been reaching out to community members. They discussed their plan this month at a joint Hill North and South management team meeting. They are planning a public meeting on July 7. 

Davis wasn’t a regular at the Barbell; she attended another after-school program based in her housing complex. But she grew up a block from the Barbell and felt the effects of its closure. 

“It seemed like there was a big change in the community,” Davis said. ​“Everybody started drifting apart. We didn’t have a place to keep us together.” 

Now an Edgewood resident, Davis has a 4‑year-old daughter whom she wants to access the opportunities that McIver recalls from the Barbell. ​“That’s why this touched me: making it a priority that my daughter experiences better,” she said.

New Haven teens ​“need more jobs,” said Davis. ​“They need an outlet.”

So far, they said, Hill residents have responded to their idea with enthusiasm.

“God, we’ve just been meeting people left and right, and they’re like, ​‘Yes, yes, yes,’ ” said McIver.

A Hub That "Seemed So Big"

When she was a child, the Barbell ​“seemed so big,” McIver recalled. 

The HCYS staff of nearly 20 made use of every square inch of the two-story building: packing in a gymnasium, library, a small store where kids could learn how to keep track of sales, administrative offices, and six classrooms that housed a Montessori preschool program. A garden filled the backyard with fresh zucchini, tomatoes, and collard greens. (A newly-built house beside the former community center has since overtaken some of that yard space.)

During her tenure as executive director, Harvey partnered with the University of New Haven to run theater workshops (with a laugh, McIver remembered forgetting her lines at a performance) and worked with the restaurant staff at Mory’s to teach etiquette classes. Harvey organized ice skating outings, movie screenings, and overnight stays at Camp Cedarcrest in Orange and Martha’s Vineyard. 

The Barbell was an early leader in professionalizing teen employment, Harvey said. Camp counselors, including McIver, received training in youth development as part of their employment, a system that Harvey would later help other programs replicate. 

HCYS was particularly known for its dances. The goal of the parties, Harvey said, was to fulfill a need that neighbors articulated for an organized, safe space where kids could socialize. Harvey is the first to acknowledge that the dances sometimes got ​“a little out of control.” Still, Davis and McIver remember the parties fondly. 

As McIver, Davis, and Harvey begin forming a 501c3 organization to revive the center, they are raising initial funds for the administrative fees along the way by selling ​“Rebuild The Barbell” buttons and t‑shirts. They have established accounts on CashApp and Zelle under the name RebirthTheBarbell, and can be contacted on Facebook or at [email protected].

They’re also making detailed plans for programming and financial stability at a rebuilt Barbell.

The trio hopes to run financial literacy, technology, and character building classes at the Carlisle Street building, to organize basketball tournaments and coat drives, and to reinstate a childcare program. 

“We’re gonna have education as a top priority,” said McIver — promoting not only academic learning, but also skills like ​“how to change a tire, so when you’re stranded on the side of the road, you don’t have to call Triple A.”

As in the Barbell’s past, Harvey said, the organization would focus on helping kids feel prepared and confident in any environment, she said, whether at a campground or an upscale restaurant.

Even in its closure, the Barbell is still reminding McIver what she’s capable of doing.

Recently, McIver ran into a few of the campers whom she mentored as a counselor at HCYS. ​“They’re so grown up, it made me feel so old,” she said. Decades later, she learned that she was their favorite counselor. ​“They used to sneak up and try to sit with me,” she remembered. 

The encounter gave her more fuel for her fight to reopen the Barbell. ​“I made an impact like my counselors made on me,” McIver said.