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CAROL LOLLIS

Robert Pura, president of Greenfield Community College, speaks at the opening ceremony Monday for the James House Community Learning Center in Northampton.

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CAROL LOLLIS

Program graduate Lena Stone speaks Monday at the James House Community Learning Center opening in Northampton.

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CAROL LOLLIS

Robert Pura, the president of GCC, speaks at the opening ceremony of the James House Community Learning Center in Northampton Monday morning.

NORTHAMPTON - Once home to a bank, a jail and a juvenile court, the historic James House on Gothic Street has been recast as a community learning center with two anchor tenants providing adult education and work-force training programs.

The Center for New Americans (CNA) and The Literacy Project (TLP) have found permanent homes under one roof to advance overlapping yet distinct programs geared toward expanding educational and economic opportunities for immigrants and refugees, while helping people obtain higher levels of education and self-sufficiency.

Dozens of community leaders, elected officials and program participants gathered under the hot sun Monday to mark the official opening of the new James House Community Learning Center at 42 Gothic St. The reincarnation of this once-deteriorating building was years in the making and the product of a collaborative effort involving the city, local, state and federal agencies, area community colleges, nonprofit organizations, business leaders and the local work force, among many others.

"It's a place that brings people together, to work together, to study together, to build a community together," said state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, D-Amherst, one of many speakers at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

In addition to the two nonprofit groups based in the building, the center also serves as a GED testing site and offers college transition classes run by Greenfield and Holyoke community colleges.

Once a week, the building is also home to a reintegration class for formerly incarcerated people. Other ventures operate intermittently in newly renovated classroom spaces, including a recent one-time program on health care offered by the Franklin Hampshire Regional Employment Board.

"Lives will change as a result of this building," said Robert Pura, president of Greenfield Community College. "Lives will change for the better."

Among those speaking at Monday's ceremony was Lena Stone of Northampton, a native of Brazil who spent the past seven years participating in CNA and TLP programs. Stone recently received her GED through programs now housed at the James House. She said she spoke no English only a few years ago, but persevered.

"I thought I would never finish, but I did," said Stone, who received warm applause from others involved in the adult literacy programs at the community learning center. "Don't give up," she said.

'Hope and opportunity'

Jim Ayres, executive director of the Center for New Americans, which also operates in Amherst and Greenfield, said the James House provides the agency with a permanent, high-quality home for its programs in spaces that are designed as classrooms.

The CNA and TLP both have three-year renewable leases at below-market rents that provide stability in long-term costs. The leases can be renewed over the next 30 years. He said the James House Community Learning Center gives the agency more visibility and also offers a more comfortable transition for those moving from its programs to those run by The Literacy Project in the same building.

"We see it as the goal of all students who come through to get self-sufficient jobs in the long run," Ayres said.

The city bought the 7,000-square-foot James House in 1994. After the Juvenile Court moved out and to Hadley, the building remained vacant for nearly two years. Northampton Mayor Clare Higgins and Teri Anderson, the city's community and economic development director, spearheaded the effort to create an adult learning and job training center, building a broad coalition of more than two dozen partners called the Northampton Community Education Consortium.

State Auditor Suzanne Bump, among many other speakers Monday, praised Higgins for her initiative and helping make the project a reality. The new center will be among the last significant legacies of Higgins' tenure.

"You had to have a lot of vision to see what Clare saw in this building," Bump said. "It was a very depressing place."

Higgins downplayed her role, calling the new James House "our legacy," and an investment in "our democracy and our future."

"Democracy depends on our literate population," she said.

During the past several years, the city leveraged more than $600,000 to transform the James House into the new community learning center, including $301,513 in federal Community Development Block Grant funds, of which $201,513 came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Other funds included a $149,000 grant from the Massachusetts Technology Corp., a $95,000 federal economic development initiative grant that U.S. Rep. Richard E. Neal, D-Springfield, helped secure, and $20,000 in donations each from Smith College, the Beveridge Family Foundation and Home Depot. Neal also addressed Monday's crowd outside the James House.

Workers from the New England Regional Council of Carpenters Local 108 and Westover Job Corps provided free labor during the renovation, while other area businesses and contractors pitched in with discounted building materials and services.

In fact, several apprentices received on-the-job training while renovating the James House.

"We're part of this community," said John Avery, a representative from the local carpenters union, explaining why Local 108 got involved. "We believe in all of the things that government does."

Said Ken White, dean of community services at Holyoke Community College: "In my mind, the James House is hope and opportunity."

Dan Crowley can be reached at dcrowley@gazettenet.com.