For 15 years, kids in Bellevue have been hanging out and going to all-ages shows in a converted church across the park from the Bellevue Square mall. The quaint little building has served as a breeding ground for youth to create art and music, and also provided a place for kids to simply hang out after school. It's a teen center that, up until two weeks ago, was known as Ground Zero.

Like many teen centers, Ground Zero has had to deal with problems like a shrinking budget, fickle interest from its target audience, and having its civic purpose misunderstood. But at one point, Ground Zero was a desirable all-ages venue for both local bands—Eastside and Seattle—and touring acts. Sadly, since the repeal of the Teen Dance Ordinance in 2002 made it easier (i.e., legal) to throw all-ages shows in Seattle proper, fewer notable acts have found it worthwhile to make the trip out to the suburbs.

Now, on top of its gradual decline, Ground Zero has suffered another pair of blows. First, the teen center recently lost much of its longtime staff, including music director Seth Dostart, who left to take the helm at the Kirkland Teen Union Building. Secondly, the Bellevue Boys & Girls Club, which has always owned Ground Zero's building but allowed it to run fairly independently, has, as part of a national rebranding initiative, renamed the teen center. Its new name? The Club.

The Club's new program director is Melissa Brzusek. While she's never run a teen center before, she boasts plenty of experience running summer day camps and other programming for the Boys & Girls Clubs. She spent last week touring other teen centers, like Redmond's Old Fire House, to get ideas and pick the brains of veterans like OFH program coordinator and original Ground Zero director Chris Cullen.

Brzusek says her directive for the former Ground Zero teen center "is to make no changes" and to do whatever it takes to "get as many teens in the center as possible." And while the name of the place has changed for what she describes as "marketing purposes," its music program will continue to host shows as a part of its Ground Zero Concert Series.

While these changes have raised some eyebrows in the all-ages community—one local teen-center employee called this a "complete gutting" of the Ground Zero program—Cullen was reassured by Brzusek's visit to the OFH. "I was completely nervous about where things were going, until I met Melissa," he says. Dostart also professed his faith that "the program will get back on its feet."

I can't help but feel a little hurt about the name change—it feels like a large corporation wiping out local history to make way for its own plans. Still, whatever its name, the teen center remains an important resource for Eastside youth, and only time will tell how the Club will live up to Ground Zero's glory days.