Community center chronicles (CCC): Facelifting the Potomac Community Center

This summer, GGWash hosted two interns through Montgomery County’s Summer RISE program, a five-week program where high school students can learn about different careers. As part of their experience, both of our interns identified a problem in their community, developed a proposed solution, and met with county officials to make the case for it–then wrote about their experiences. This post is from Cynthea Wang, a rising senior at Richard Montgomery High School in Rockville.

Growing up, I would often visit the Potomac Community Center (PCC) for its grass playing field, whether it was for recreational soccer practices or simply to stop by during neighborhood walks. In this way, the community center was a familiar and cherished part of my childhood. However, as I grew older, I began to notice a curious trend: I rarely heard about events being hosted at the community center, and it seemed that people my age were not participating in the activities offered by the PCC.

When I started high school at Richard Montgomery in Rockville, I was struck by the contrast. In the city of Rockville, I found that higher-quality and more accessible community facilities were readily available to students and the wider community compared to those provided by Montgomery County. It was then that I began to realize that my local community center was in a state of disrepair.

About the PCC

The Potomac Community Center, often visited for its election-time services, has around 100,000 annual patrons. Despite its high foot traffic, it has not been fully renovated or refurbished since it was built 35 years ago. Because of its outdated appearance and facilities, the PCC is an underutilized community resource (particularly among younger audiences) that is being outcompeted by private amenities nearby such as Cabin John Mall, the Potomac Village shopping center, Park Potomac, and private gyms.

Potomac as a whole was known for an aging population when I first moved here ten years ago, but from my personal experience, there seems to be a shift in more younger families moving to Potomac for the area’s schools in the past few years. In 2022, 38% of Potomac households included an under-18 child. Additionally, given that much of Potomac consists of single-family homes spread far apart, the sense of community is also weaker compared to neighboring regions. As a result, I think there’s a great opportunity to fill a market gap by engaging younger communities in revitalizing the PCC as a community hub. Doing so could help rid Potomac of its outdated reputation once and for all.

Goals

When I began my project, which I liked to call “Cynthea’s Cool Contribution to Contemporary Civilization” (CCCCC), I first listed out my main objectives in renovating/refurbishing the PCC:

• Renew an outdated communal space for current users
• Compete with private actors to bring in new users
• Increase community cohesion

After some initial research to distill these general goals into specific asks, I determined that a complete renovation is not in the cards with the Montgomery County Recreation Department’s current funding. I decided to focus my project on replacing or refurbishing a few of the existing assets in the center, including:

• Old carpet, specifically in the community room
• Suspicious-looking ceiling tiles in the main room (which I would later be told had been riddled by holes and received several makeshift repairs)
• The front entrance overhang

CCCCC in action

Earlier this month, following a meeting with Montgomery County At-Large Councilmember Evan Glass, I was advised to examine the capital improvements budget and note how the recreation department makes requests and considers factors for renovation like population density. I looked into existing projects planned six years ahead and found that another local community center, the Clara Barton Community Center in Cabin John, was slated for refurbishment in 2029.

While visiting the PCC, I also had a brief discussion with Allan Cohen of Friends of the Potomac Community Center. Speaking with someone who was at the center daily gave me insight into what specific changes and improvements the center needs most urgently. I discussed what I learned with David Branick, Facilities and Programs Manager with the Montgomery County Recreation Department, and brought up the possibility of moving the PCC higher up on the backlog for projects funded by the ongoing Recreation Center Asset Replacement project in the county’s capital improvement plan. I also questioned what factors had helped Clara Barton Community Center take higher precedence to the department.

Through this conversation, I learned that the Department of General Services (DGS) evaluates buildings on a three-year cycle, taking into account the age of the facility, the timing of its last upgrade, and how well the system has been maintained as the main influencing factors for funding decisions. And while the recreation department monitors everything to update the backlog, their budget cannot accommodate all the necessary improvements.

Lessons and takeaways

Reflecting on my research project project, I realized that most of my time was consumed by acquiring a general understanding of all the necessary steps needed before funding is approved for a project. Transparency emerged as a crucial issue; although I could see what projects were allocated funding for renovations within the next six years, finding specific data on backlogs and where the PCC was in the renovation pipeline was challenging.

My most significant takeaway was how casual, open to conversation, and down-to-earth the experts and authorities I talked to throughout my investigation were. Having never been deeply involved in local government before, this was something I was pleasantly surprised by. In particular, this experience highlighted the interesting contrast between the openness of government officials themselves to new ideas, and the rigidity of the bureaucratic systems through which change is actually effected. Through my interactions with both, I witnessed democracy in action, and discovered that at the end of the day, community engagement is always the most important driving force in initiating change.

Past and present photos of the PCC (PPPP)

Below, I have included pictures of the PCC (circa the 90s, from the Montgomery County Department of Recreation website) mixed in with pictures I took at the PCC in July 2024. Spot the difference!