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. 