Melissa Gallagher, executive director of The Grapevine Family & Community Resource Center, calls a $1 million New Hampshire Community Development Finance Authority (CDFA) grant  “absolutely life-changing for us.”

Due to the grant, the Avenue A Teen Center, a program of The Grapevine, will have a new home attached to the Grapevine’s headquarters at 4 Aiken St. in Antrim. 

“Receiving this grant will enable us to create the space we need for our teens without having to ask our community to give more when times are already tough; we can now do this project without having to start a capital campaign,” Gallagher said. “This is such a gift for our organization, for our youth and families, for our whole community.”

The new Avenue A addition will be 2,300 square feet and include several separate rooms and a non-commercial kitchen. Construction will start in September and will be completed by August 2025. The grant funds, which will come in the form of a forgivable loan, can only be used for the construction of the new Avenue A Teen Center.

The new, fully accessible facility will double Avenue A’s capacity for programming, provide access to The Grapevine’s outdoor recreation spaces and improve parking and pedestrian safety.

Avenue A has been in its current space on Main Street in Antrim, which is privately owned, since 2007. Gallagher said that participation at Avenue A has tripled since 2016, and the center currently serves 300 middle- and high-school students each year. Programming includes career and life skill training, social and emotional development and mentorship for youth. Community volunteers teach everything from creative writing to woodworking, piano, cooking, fishing and “lawn chair drill team.” 

“It is a wonderful space, but we have just outgrown it,” Gallagher said. “There is no outdoor space. Since it is all one big room, there were no spaces for kids who maybe just want to tuck away. Some of the teens are neurodivergent, and being able to take a step away is really important for them. We were at the limit of being able to expand.”

Gallagher said the Avenue A teens have taken a big role in planning and designing the new space, and that they want to keep many of the popular features, including comfortable furniture, a pool table, a snack bar, walls covered with art and a music room. 

“We have been working with kids to see what they would like to see in the new space. We actually did a survey as part of the CDFA application to see what our students wanted. We have a lot of popular, long-standing programs, including our middle- and high-school writing programs.  The kids love woodworking. The kids are very clear they want it to continue to be a warm, welcoming space.”

Indicating the tiny kitchen at the existing Avenue A space, Gallagher added that “food is a huge part of why the kids come here.” One of the most-popular teen programs is the teen campfire evenings, which teens instituted after learning about the Mom’s Campfire and Dad’s Campfire programs. 

“Now the teen center will be right next to where we have the fire pit,” Gallagher said.

An additional benefit of moving Avenue A to the Aiken Street location is that it will bring all The Grapevine’s services under one roof.

“We often have clients who come to The Grapevine who might not know about Avenue A, and we have teens who might not know about The Grapevine. Having everything together, teens will see we have all these programs for the whole family.  We have moms with little ones coming to The Grapevine, but they might also have teens at home who would benefit from Avenue A,” Gallagher said. “We want people to know we are all the same organization and that we provide services for the entire family.” 

Gallagher gave the example of The Grapevine’s Benjamin Pratt Wood Bank of an example of a program that brings people in and then exposes them to the other resources available.

“We have our wood bank, but then we also have our tool bank, which people might not know about. We have a resource room for parents, we have our own little food pantry,” Gallagher said.

Recalling the moment she and Jacqueline Roland, who is the Grapevine’s director of teen services, heard about the grant, Gallagher still gets teary-eyed.

“It was surreal. We could not believe it. We were both bawling, and then the woman from CDFA who told us the news got choked up,” Gallagher recalled. “It was just magical.”