The East Central Community Center is an institutional community property in Spokane’s East Central Neighborhood that is associated with Spokane’s community center initiative of the late 1970s and 1980s that resulted in multiple community centers throughout Spokane.

The East Central Community Center has maintained its role as a community resource providing a variety of services for the community. A newspaper article from 1976 when the center was being contemplated stated that the goal of the center was to create “a social refuge for their elderly and young, a dispensing point for many human services.” The mission remains the same in 2024. Freda Gandy, the director of the center in 2024, succinctly describes the community center as a “one-stop shop to meet the community’s needs.” That is not an exaggeration. Every corner of the building has a different community use, from teen center to senior cafeteria, and from infant day care to a provider who helps families cover their utility bills.

The East Central Community Center is significant under two categories as established in Spokane Municipal Code 17D.100.020. The building is significant under Category A due to its association with the broad patterns of Spokane history particularly as the catalyst that initiated an era of community center construction in Spokane. The building is also significant under Category E due to its association with Spokane’s racially and ethnically diverse East Central community and particularly with the League of Women for Community Action.

The East Central Community Center is significant under Category A due to its association with Spokane’s era of community center construction. The decade-long grassroots community effort to establish and build the East Central Community Center was a catalyst and model for other Spokane neighborhoods to open their own community center. The West Central Community Center opened in 1980 and the Northeast Community Center opened in 1982 following in the footsteps of East Central and using similar funding models to establish and build the centers. Furthermore, the Mayor of Spokane at the time East Central Community Center opened, Ron Bair, exclaimed that the center and its supporters had “become a model used by the rest of the United States.”

The East Central Community Center is exceptionally significant under Category E due to its deep association with the racially and ethnically diverse East Central Neighborhood and particularly with the influential community organization the League of Women for Community Action. The League was a group of approximately twenty-five Black women who were the primary advocates for the formation of the center and were the first provider to receive a contract from Spokane City Council to run the center.

Although a portion of the building remains from the Edison School which was previously on this site, the period of significance for the East Central Community Center begins at the time of redevelopment in 1978 and stretches to 2024, as the community center uses of the building continue at the time this nomination was prepared.

Management Agreement