Meadows Park Community Center will close its doors Friday, but efforts are underway to find options that might help Colorado Springs reopen the center.

Mayor Yemi Mobolade announced in September that Meadows Park would close, one of the biggest casualties of the city’s $31 million budget shortfall. City officials chose to close it because they said it had the lowest attendance and use among the four city-owned community centers.

Wednesday was the center’s final senior lunch, a twice-a-week event where older residents met to eat together in the community center’s main room. Around 18 people were on hand for the lunch.

Also in the room were two advisers from Mobolade’s office, Danielle Summerville and Thomas Thompson. They listened to seniors’ concerns about losing the center and let community members know that the building might not be destined to stay closed forever.

“The city’s funding of it is ending, that is what is happening, but there are other sources and other people in the community,” Thompson said. “Is there something we can get together to start from scratch and see what are the needs of this area? How can we step back in?”

Staff announced plans for a community meeting at Meadows Park in late October to discuss the building’s future. While a date has not been set, the meeting would likely involve Mobolade, several members of the Colorado Springs City Council, neighbors and community leaders who were interested in potentially operating the building.

Councilmember Nancy Henjum said she hoped the meeting would provide a better understanding of which programs residents are most determined to keep and what groups could step in to fill the need.

“I’m putting my energy into this because it’s all about being a community together. Serving each other and being good neighbors — that is how we stay strong as a community,” Henjum said.

Colorado Springs previously used a similar outsourcing model at Westside Community Center. The nonprofit Center for Strategic Ministry operated the center from 2010 until 2021, which included managing the building and providing volunteers to help staff events, before asking out of its contract with the city early.

After fielding proposals from groups including Woodmen Valley Chapel, the YMCA and a residential developer, the city ended up taking over operations again in 2022. The Westside Community Center Working Committee was established to help evaluate new tenants of the building.

RISE Southeast Executive Director Joyce Salazar helped organize Wednesday’s visit and several other efforts to support Meadows Park. Salazar said people in the Stratton Meadows neighborhood reached out to her shortly after the announcement of Meadows Park’s impending closure because of her experience working with the city.

Salazar said Stratton Meadows had a lot in common with some of the struggling neighborhoods she worked with in southeast Colorado Springs. The cut also made her worry about the future of Deerfield Hills Community Center on the city’s southeast side.

“This is not the time to yell at anybody,” Salazar said ahead of Wednesday’s meeting. “Ask the questions that need to be asked, share the information about what you need from the center. If somebody new comes in and wants to bring planning or resources here, the community should be involved.”

Summerville, an adviser to the mayor, said she attended programs at Meadows Park while growing up. She and Thompson fielded skeptical questions from seniors about why the city chose to close Meadows and why it took so long to speak with city leaders.

Trish Sanders pressed the city about why there would be one big cut at Meadows Park instead of smaller cuts across the four community centers. Colorado Springs is slated to save around $775,000 by closing the center and letting go of the majority of its staff. The Meadows Park layoffs were the largest single staff cut among the 34 positions removed ahead of the 2026 budget.

“I can’t see hitting the worst-off place and not having taken into consideration taking things from the other ones to help subsidize and keep this place in progress,” Sanders said.

Distributing the budget cuts was the same idea that Brian Kates has been pushing to City Council over the past few weeks. Kates retired in August as director of Meadows Park Community Center after nearly 30 years leading the building.

Kates said he had talked to many councilmembers about “alternative operations” to keep the building open in 2026. Under his proposal, all of the community centers would operate at closer to 80% of their budget next year with limited staff. Kates said Meadows Park was already on track to operate on a reduced budget after the Parks Department cut the number of summer school programs and let the after-school program with Harrison School District 2 expire.

“It’s much more complicated to reduce funding across all of the centers and find temporary sources. But if you really believe in these spaces, you’ll fight for them and do everything you can to keep them available to the public,” Kates said.

Thousands of additional dollars could be waiting in the wings from the Pikes Peak Community Foundation. Kates said the foundation set up a fund in 2010, the last time community centers were slated to close, to help keep each center open.

Henjum said City Council just started to have deeper 2026 budget discussions this week. She said the Parks Department had to make tough decisions because of the budget shortfall and hoped the city would limit the long-term impacts.

Supporters of Meadows Park say the usage numbers Colorado Springs has released undercount the impact of the building. Many said their biggest concern was losing programs that helped children in the neighborhood.

“We want to make sure all these programs don’t close, so we can keep something going. Especially if it’s something with programs for the kids to come back to,” resident Sheryle Nix said.