LAFAYETTE, IN — A pair of agenda items Lafayette’s City Council approved Monday have paved the way for a new multi-million-dollar Right Steps facility on the city’s north end.
Right Steps, a nonprofit child-care center serving several communities in the Greater Lafayette area, requested two properties be rezoned from R2 residential to NBU for neighborhood business. The two properties at 1201 N. 18th St. and 1200 N. 19th St. are the former sites of the Hanna Community Center and the Dennis Burton Care Center.
Total cost for the new Right Steps facility will be $10.2 million, Lafayette city attorney Jacque Chosnek said.
The new child-care center would be about 2,800 square feet, Right Steps board member Michael Dean said, and would be able to serve 182 children. It would potentially also open up the possibility of evening-hours child care for parents who work second shift.
The location’s history has served as a community resource for decades, and the child-care provider would be in the center of a residential area and nearby schools, Dean said.
The Hanna Center moved from its former 18th Street location in 2018, into the North End Community Center. The Dennis Burton Care Center was razed in 2024 after the building was found to be too far beyond repair.
Although the former Hanna Center will be razed, Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski said the existing park will remain. Part of the city’s commitment to the project will include the donation of a playground.
“We think that we can make this into a very, very productive area, and again, keep it in that tradition of doing an activity that will give back to the community,” Roswarski said.
But Lafayette city councilman Perry Brown said he would not vote on the ordinance, nor a second ordinance for the city to vacate Hanna Street, which would allow the construction project to continue forward.
Brown said his reason for abstaining is tied to the Hanna Center, one of the few pieces of history remaining for the Black community on Lafayette’s north end.
“I have paced around the floor for a while over this, because I know how much time I spent at the Hanna Center, and what I did there, and what a lot of people did there,” Brown said, taking a long pause. “I cannot put my hand to this. I cannot countenance the erasure of the last bit of the history of Black Lafayette.”
Brown said he understands the need for more child care in Lafayette, acknowledging it will be a good project. But that didn’t erase his pain in knowing a piece of Lafayette’s Black history would be removed as a result.
The site for the new Right Steps center holds deep roots in Lafayette’s north end. The beginnings trace to the former Lincoln Center, according to the Area Plan Commission staff report from the Feb. 18 meeting, which saw a unanimous approval of the requested rezone. The Lincoln Center’s foundational purpose was to serve the welfare and social needs of the Black community and other minority groups, where resources were limited.
In 1923, a new $54,000 brick Lincoln School opened at 14th and Salem streets with classrooms, a gymnasium and an assembly hall, also serving as a community center. In 1943, the Lincoln Community Center was organized at Lincoln School, where fundraising made it possible to buy land at the corner of 18th and Hanna streets.
In 1978, the Lincoln Community Center moved into houses within the 1800 block of Hanna Street, according to the APC report. In an effort to take advantage of community development funding, the Lincoln Community Center merged with the Northside Neighborhood Council, leading the rebrand as the Hanna Community Center.
In 1969, Lafayette Community Care Center and the original Dennis Burton Care Center were founded with the common goal of providing affordable child care to working families, APC staff said in the report. In 1976, the two centers merged to become Tippecanoe County Child Care to expand their reach. In 2013, the center rebranded as Right Steps, which serves more than 450 children in 300 families.
In a statement posted to the Hanna Center’s Facebook page on Feb. 27, Executive Director Kajen Monroe said the loss of the center’s original building has prompted a lot of “hard questions.”
Although those questions, no matter how hard, are fair, Monroe said they offer a display of the Hanna Center’s institutional memory and community vigilance.
“I may be new to this seat, but I am not new to this organization’s story,” Monroe said in a statement, “and with that I carry full responsibility for where Hanna goes from here, including the context I’ve inherited.”
Both ordinances connected to the Right Steps development passed with six in favor, none against, and Brown’s abstaining.
A hearing on the ordinance to vacate Hanna Street will be on April 6 at 6 p.m., when the council will meet again for a final vote on the ordinances.
Jillian Ellison is a reporter for the Journal & Courier. She can be reached via email at jellison@usatodayco.com.
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Lafayette council gives initial OK for new Right Steps site rezoning
Reporting by Jillian Ellison, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
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