HUBBARD — A resident representing a group aimed at helping the youth in the community is hoping to work with the city for future endeavors, as he explained to council members at Monday’s meeting.

Parkview Drive resident James Chaney said he was at the meeting at the request of Councilman Jonathan Rose, D-at Large, adding that he hoped to introduce the Hubbard Youth Coalition’s activities as its representative.

Chaney said the coalition’s focus is to help younger individuals find academic, community service and well-being success, with the hope of creating leaders in the community.

“We’ve been able to accomplish a lot in the last five years, but with our health and well-being aspect, one of the major components that we’ve had is the renovation of the Roosevelt Student Wellness Center,” Chaney said. “We have worked with the school district for the last five years to put plans together to have the building evaluated by architects and engineers.”

Chaney said together, they were able to complete four phases of the renovation at $450,000 worth of work.

Chaney said the school has been “amazing,” leasing the coalition the building for a dollar a year, adding that they also have senior programming from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for people 55 and older.

“We currently have about 150 members; 135-plus of those are Hubbard residents, but we do have about 15, 18 residents from out of town that come in to use our facility,” Chaney said.

He said the coalition’s goal is to make sure the facility is free for as many kids as possible in the community.

“All of our youth programs — Hubbard Community Youth League, Hubbard Little Eagles, our youth soccer — they use the facility for free as long as they’re with coaches and there’s a group of them,” Chaney said. “We’ve had over 2,300 practices over the last 18 months for those sports programs; that includes the high school — boys and girls softball.”

Chaney said his goal in speaking to council was to figure out whether they had any interest in working with the nonprofit, admitting that he didn’t know any of them personally outside of Rose.

“Whether that’s through grants — one of the things we have an interest in is beautifying the exterior; we’re actually in the process right now of starting the excavation in two weeks for a playground that’s going to be down there,” Chaney said. “That’s a $300,000 playground that we’ve raised the money for — it’s going to be an all-inclusive playground that’s going to be wheelchair accessible.”

Chaney said the playground will have sensory items for children on the autism spectrum, and there will be two large towers, too.

Chaney said construction is set to start in the next two weeks, with a community build set for April 16 through 18 to bring residents together to help save some money and use donations wisely.

“Again, I’m just here to extend a request to see if there’s any way we can work together — whether that’s through lighting the exterior,” Chaney said. “But there could be other things down the road where we could work together to make it a better place for the community, since it serves so many.”

Chaney said they’ve “hustled” for approximately five years to obtain the money they have thus far for the building’s interior.

“We wrote grants, we had a lot of contractors give in-kind donations; they did the work and didn’t charge us, or they charged us just a little bit,” Chaney said.

Chaney said they struggled in the first year-and-a-half to raise money, noting that it involved him trying to get people interested in black-and-white copies of a blueprint.

“As soon as we raised money — we raised about $100,000 like that, and we took a chance, and we started the construction,” Chaney said. “Within six weeks, another $150,000 came in; as soon as people saw that we were going to be able to accomplish what we set out to do, we went from $100,000 to $250,000, just like that.”

He said he thought it would take two-and-a-half years to complete all four phases of the building interior, but it ended up taking less than a year.

In terms of how the council could help Chaney, he reiterated plans to light up the Roosevelt Center’s exterior so the playground could be used around the clock.

“The sidewalks are in great shape. We’re going to be pouring new sidewalks in the grass area so people can access the playground with wheelchairs. Strollers (can) come off the public sidewalk, into the playground area,” Chaney said. “But the actual public sidewalks aren’t great. I don’t care about that to be honest with you, but that may be something that might help the public access the facility a little bit easier.”