The Buck Melton Community Center has a new owner.
The Macon Housing Authority sold the 35,000-square-foot building at Felton Avenue and Anthony Road to one of its tenants there: the Boys & Girls Club of Central Georgia. The housing authority board approved the sale for $650,000 in a unanimous vote at its regular monthly meeting Tuesday.
“We’re going to continue to use it as it currently is, as a community resource hub,” Boys & Girls Club of Central Georgia President Phillip Bryant said. “It puts us closer to the children and the families that we’re serving.”
The building is next to Ingram-Pye Elementary School, down the road from Ballard-Hudson Middle School and near Murphey and Felton homes.
“They’re already serving many, many of our residents,” housing authority CEO Mike Austin said. “So it just made all the sense in the world. It kind of allows us to focus more and more on what we do best, which is affordable housing and real estate management.”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development required the property deed to include a 100-year land covenant that obligates the new owner to maintain the building’s use as a community resource center. It also mandated the housing authority to sell the building below market price.
Offices currently operating inside the center include Georgia Department of Public Health’s Women, Infants and Children program, the Macon-Bibb County Economic Opportunity Council’s Head Start program, Communities in Schools of Central Georgia Inc. and others. Bryant said those entities plan to remain in the building.
Before it became a hub for community resources and nonprofits, the brick building with blue arches was the McKenna National Guard Armory. The state of Georgia deeded the old armory to the City of Macon in 2005 for $10, land records show. Months later, the city deeded the property to the housing authority, which renovated it with $6 million in U.S. Housing and Urban Development dollars and opened it as the Buck Melton Community Center in 2009.
The housing authority named the building after former Macon Mayor Buckner F. “Buck” Melton. The authority plans to continue housing its management office for Felton Homes inside the building.
Bryant said the Boys & Girls Club of Central Georgia eventually plans to move its administrative offices into the building from digs it rents downtown.
Austin said the Boys & Girls Club has been operating in the community center since it first opened.
“We’re excited to see what they’re going to do with it,” he said. “I think they’re really going to take it to the next level.”
To contact Civic Journalism Fellow Laura Corley, call 478-301-5777 or email [email protected].
