Urban Legend

After 26 years at the helm of the Southwest Community Center (SWCC), Jesse Dowdell is stepping down at the end of April. “We’re ready for change,” he observes, maintaining that the services provided by the multipurpose agency will remain the same, but that a new person will take the operation to a new level. He is confident that even at a time of economic crunch in the human service industry, the new leadership will inherit a solid infrastructure, built over almost three decades of consistency and attention to detail. At 68, he is proud of the results of his “meaning what I say, and doing it.” But it wasn’t easy.

An example he cites is the planters on the sidewalk in front of the facility at 401 South Ave.. When he took over leadership from the Rev. Larry Briggs, the only other executive director SWCC has had, he studied urban forestry to determine what plants and flowers would survive the heavily trafficked street. At first those planted on a Friday would be ripped up by the next Monday. 

Michael Davis Photos

“Poor people are so used to nothing,” he notes, “that when they get nice things they don’t know how to take care of them.” He told his staffers to just keep planting, and eventually the planters became a point of pride for the neighborhood.

Opened in 1975, the SWCC offers a full range of services responding to the needs of pre-schoolers to senior citizens including the areas of education, health, employment, culture, recreation and the legal system. Over 38 years a Family Planning program has focused on expanding and improving reproductive health care for individuals who have traditionally been excluded from the health care system. FACES, an HIV/AIDS awareness program, provides prevention education, condom distribution and free rapid testing. Mainstream promotes living skill for the developmentally disabled. Several youth programs focus on education and the prevention of drug and alcohol abuse and violence. An Onondaga County Public Library branch at the center promotes reading.

Born in Auburn, Ala., Dowdell grew up on Syracuse’s South Side, and was a standout athlete at Syracuse’s then-
Vocational High School, located inside Blodgett School, now the West Side Academy, 312 Oswego St. He attended Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, and earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology locally from Empire State College. He was an elementary school teacher in the Syracuse City School District when the SWCC post opened up, and got a major boost of encouragement from former superintendent of schools, the late Sidney Johnson, to take the job. 

He anticipates a return to teaching after retiring from the center, perhaps at a charter school. “Whatever we’ve done here,” he reflects, “I hope we’ve done it with a touch of class.” A farewell event has been scheduled for King King Architects, 358 W. Jefferson St., with a wine tasting on Saturday, April 20, 6 to 9 p.m. 

The ticket price for the farewell event is to be determined. Tickets will be available from the Southwest Community Center at 671-5802.

Q: What was it like when you first came to Southwest Community Center, and what’s it like now?

A: I came here in an interim situation in October 1986 and they gave me the job May 1, 1987. Then, we were not doing very much. The annual budget was about $280,000. Very few people were using the facility. The place was a mess. So we shut the doors and cleaned it up. That was the first thing we did. But a whole lot of stuff has happened between then and now. Today I think we’re in a place where we have the infrastructure to support the activity for any direction that this organization wants to move in.

Q: Is this just a service-providing institution, or are there other things, too?

A: There is more than just providing services. This is a place that the community can look up to and be proud of, look for services, look for referrals or come and get warm, come and get something to eat, come and get a condom, or come and just get a good conversation. You can get a workout. The place has become, in my mind, the hub of the community. Nothing really happens in this community that does not pass through this organization. 

Q: There are actually two communities involved, one the immediate neighborhood, the other a larger community. Can you characterize those two and the differences?

A: The difference is that in the immediate community we bring credibility. That’s where our service delivery is most important. When I walked in here 25 years ago, {the immediate neighborhood} was a very transit community. What it has become since then, because of efforts made by this community center and this organization, is a clean meeting place where we could talk about planning for the community. Since then, we are not so transit any more. 

A lot of the services we were delivering in 1987 were geared toward a transit community, and the services we’re dealing with today are more family-oriented. We have a large reproduction health program. Our reproduction health program is far reaching. We also run a clinic in North Syracuse and one on Slocum Avenue. We have AIDS programs for people infected or affected by the HIV virus. We reach way beyond our immediate community. 

Q: You mentioned a $280,000 budget when you started here. Now the budget is $1.35 million.

A: But that’s down in the last four years. Five years ago, we were up to $6 million. So we’ve been up and we’ve been down. Even with that, today, I think we’re doing very, very well.

Q: What factors affect the economy of the center?

A: Initially this was a building for service deliverers to come in and provide the services. During my tenure here, we decided that we wanted to get into providing the direct services because we had a vested interest in seeing a good solid service delivered. These outsiders come in, they don’t care whether people come to access the services or not, they know they’re going to get paid. We see it a little differently. People that live in the community, people who have a vested interest in the community, should be the service deliverer because then you’re going to get a better product.

This economic crunch really started with everybody else about four years ago. For us it started about five years ago. All of a sudden we were out there, but working with our banking partners; when the crunch hit we were well on down the recovery road. Right now we have a line of credit with our bank that we haven’t used in two years. 

When Nancy Larraine Hoffmann lost that election for the 49th {state Senate} District it cost us a lot of money. She was a friend of the organization. We had money we could use at our discretion. She supported our youth activities. I’ll bet it cost us anywhere from $50,000 to $200,000 a year. When she went away those dollars went away. But then New York state people decided to do things differently, Onondaga County decided to do things differently. We’ve gotten phased out in a lot of different ways.

Michael Davis Photo/2003

Q: Critics of your operation have suggested the center should devote space to retail outlets, a mini-mall for the neighborhood, a place to create jobs.

A: I don’t think it needs to be a mall. One of the things that I’m really, really proud of is that I’ve managed to continue to be who I am rather than who everybody else thinks I should be. I say that to say that everybody has some idea as to what this place needs to be, that everyone can do my job better than me. I don’t envision a mall, but I do envision employment. We had programs with the state and federal Labor Departments. We’d like to work closely with CNY Works. I’d love to see them with a satellite site. Those are the sort of things the new person is going to want to take a good look at. 

Most people who pass through our doors, most males particularly, have had an encounter with the criminal justice system. That encounter certainly is an inhibitor when it comes down to them looking for places to work. I think this would be a wonderful place to have some sort of employment re-entry program for people re-entering the community, because this is the first place they come. That would give the new person something to do.

Q: One thing that’s obvious observing the center over time is a constancy of staff. How do you keep staff at jobs that are potentially very stressful?

A: We have people who have been here since the place opened. These people are committed. They are community folks. We’re about growing community. 

My finance person walked in here as an intern from BOCES. When that internship was over she asked for a job. We gave her a little bookkeeping job and got her to Onondaga Community College. She took the accounting program and passed it with honors. We got her into Le Moyne College, one of the best accounting programs in the area. She graduated with honors, while raising a family and working at the center. Now she runs my finance department. 

My director of operations came in here as a switchboard operator. She is responsible for keeping this place clean. In my mind, black folks or poor people are so used to settling for less that cleanliness is not something very high on their priority list. Well, it’s high on ours. It gives our constituency a sense of “well, maybe they do know what they’re doing.” 

Q: One of your greatest challenges is dealing with youth. Outside this neighborhood people have an image of them mostly playing sports, dropping out of school, being in gangs. What’s the reality with youth, and how do you deal with their issues?

A: Those are issues that we deal with, but we have some good kids. We have kids working on master’s programs, working on Ph.Ds. But we also have that element that has not done very well, that the streets have won out with. There’s not a whole hell of a lot that we’ve done about that, but there is something in my mind that we seriously need to address. 

Attitude toward education in our community is not the way it was when I grew up in this community. When I grew up in this community, education was the key. That was how you were going to have a better life. Everybody talked about it. They would say to me, “Yeah, you’re a good athlete, but what about the books?”

A lot of our kids these days do not have that external pressure being put on them. Poor people have gotten to the point where they just don’t see the need for education. They’re looking for instant gratification, which isn’t there anymore. I have a theory about that. In the old days, when we were kids growing up around here, anybody, if they could go to one of these plants, could get a good job and they didn’t need the high school education. That changed. Those factory jobs are not here.  

The gang factor has impacted here, and I think we’ve dealt with it fairly well. Six or seven years ago when all of a sudden Syracuse realized they had gang problems, we were having serious problems over on the corner of Hudson and Bellevue, where kids were hanging out, shots were being fired on a regular basis. When we had resources thanks to the likes of Nancy Larraine Hoffmann, we went over there every other week and cooked hot dogs and talked with those kids consistently. 

Q: One study finds Syracuse the fifth most segregated city of its size. How do racial attitudes in this area affect you and your operation?

A: It does. It does. That’s been a major problem. I’m a strong-willed person, and I think that’s been part of our success. But there’s a lot of people I’ve rubbed the wrong way, and because I’ve rubbed them the wrong way they decide they’re not going to cooperate with this organization. Whether that’s personal or racial, I think that’s bullshit.