Commonpoint, a growing Queens nonprofit that runs community centers, has taken over operations at the former Madison Boys and Girls Club Joel E. Smilow clubhouse in Crotona, after purchasing the building for $7.9 million late last year — saving a storied youth facility from closing.
Beginning this Thursday, the Bronx Center will be fully open to the public, restoring services and an after-school space for hundreds of local youth at the site of a famous gang treaty. A newly renovated pool will open in March, after years out of service.
The center is Commonpoint’s first full-service location in The Bronx. The Queens-centered organization, whose services include job training and high school equivalency courses, health and wellness classes, and programs for youth, families and older adults, has expanded aggressively in recent years to serve about 100,000 people at more than 80 locations.
“We still imagine ourselves to be a bit on a listening tour,” Commonpoint President and CEO Danielle Ellman told THE CITY in a visit this week to the Bronx center, at 1665 Hoe Avenue.
“We recognize that this community building will only be successful if community feels their voice and their choice is represented in it,” said Ellman.
Commonpoint repaired what had been an unusable swimming pool, Feb. 24, 2025. Credit: Jonathan Custodio/THE CITY
Ellman estimated that the 37,000 square foot center is currently serving 250 to 350 people per week but hopes to expand that to 2,000 while offering new services, including fitness and wellness classes for older adults and swim instruction for all ages and skill levels while continuing to provide dance and music instruction, a rec room and a computer room.
While under the management of the Boys and Girls Club, the pool had been inoperable, with water leaking out through holes and crevices. Commonpoint spent $200,000 to renovate it, along with an additional $500,000 for a complete “facelift” of the building’s interior that included new paint, signage, lighting and redoing the floors and walls.
Construction workers were using an automated vacuum to clean the floor of the pool, replacing and cleaning out the gutters and powerwashing the deck tiling when THE CITY visited on Monday.
Meanwhile, an ESL and a high school equivalency class were taking place in two classrooms on the first floor.
ESL students Kimberly Wright, Luz Castillo and Brenda Duran told THE CITY that they’ve made strides in their English language skills one month into a free six-month course. The mother of two boys, a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old, Wright is hoping to improve her English to help them be bilingual and as she plans to reenter the workforce when her youngest enters 3-K.
“We’re here trying to improve our English,practice every day,” said Wright, who immigrated five years ago from Panama, where she worked as a compliance officer. “I live in the neighborhood, so one day when one friend told me, ‘Oh yeah, look they have some classes,’ I came here and let’s go.”
Closing and a Grand Re-opening
The Boys and Girls Club had run the facility since 1967, but in July of 2023, it reached a $22 million bankruptcy settlement to pay off a trust covering 149 people who sued under the New York Child Victims Act. The plaintiffs alleged they had been abused by Dr. Reginald Archibald, a pediatric endocrinologist who volunteered from the 1940s through the 1980s at other clubhouses operated by the organization.
Last April, CEO Tim McChristian announced the “heartbreaking” decision to shutter the Smilow clubhouse by August, leaving hundreds of local youth without their afterschool hang-out.
That same Spring, Commonpoint found out its lease for a site in Mott Haven, where they had operated a high school equivalency program and vocational training for teenagers and young adults since 2022, was not going to be renewed. Apex Development Group, a Long Island-based real estate developer and construction management company, suggested that Commonpoint look at the Hoe Avenue location, which had a restrictive covenant with the city from a 2015 funding agreement mandating that the building only be used as a community and recreation center through 2030.
The youth center is legendary as the site of a 1971 gang truce, Feb. 24, 2025. Credit: Jonathan Custodio/THE CITY
Ellman said Apex had been looking at the space as a potential charter school, which would have involved filling the pool with concrete to create more classroom space.
“The idea that a pool that existed in a borough that has too few pools already would no longer exist kind of piqued our curiosity,” said Ellman. “To the credit of the Madison Girls and Boys Club, the building was very loved and we could see that.”
Commonpoint’s purchase averts the shutdown of a clubhouse that has historically been a safe haven for youth, especially those involved in gangs.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Black American and Puerto Rican gangs including The Black Spades, Savage Nomads, Ghetto Brothers and the Savage Skulls fought for territory in the South Bronx.
As the violence got deadlier, the Ghetto Brothers sought to become peacekeepers, organizing clothing drives and a free breakfast program that was inspired by the mutual aid efforts of the Black Panther Party. The Ghetto Brothers assigned Cornell Benjamin, better known as “Black Benjie,” as their top peace counselor.
A throwback violence interrupter, Benjamin was murdered for his efforts on Dec. 2, 1971, trying to de-escalate a dispute between rival gangs in Horseshoe Park on East 165th Street and Rogers Place. After his death, his mother, Gwendolyn Benjamin, helped convince the Ghetto Brothers not to retaliate against anyone and instead seek the peace he’d wanted.
That led to a meeting of about 40 gang leaders at a neutral site: the Hoe Avenue Boys Club.
Commonpoint’s music studio, Feb. 24, 2025. Credit: Jonathan Custodio/THE CITY
Now the storied building begins a new chapter.
Weeks after the Boys and Girls Club closed the site at the end of August, Commonpoint began programs there. By December, the sale was finalized and Common Point began renovating the building.
Now, the group is primed for its ribbon-cutting ceremony on Thursday as the start of a collaborative expansion in The Bronx for a group whose home base was long the suburban neighborhoods of northeast Queens, under the name Samuel Field YM & YWHA.
“Sky’s the limit,” said Ellman. “I’m gonna be corny for a second, but we try to be the common point of community. We recognize that over a lifetime, your needs can evolve and change, but we can be a constant and a common point for you.”
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