A Profile: Ray + Joan Kroc Community Center – TAT Architects and Suffolk Construction

Boston – The new $33 million, 90,000sf Salvation Army Ray + Joan Kroc Community Center in Boston’s Dorchester section is the largest private non-profit social service investment in New England and the largest community center to be built in Massachusetts.
The Center was designed by The Architectural Team Inc. Suffolk Construction served as Construction Manager on the project. McNamara/Salvia was the structural engineer.   Mark DiNapoli, Suffolk’s President & General Manager, Northeast Region, said. “It took eighteen months to complete the construction and we exceeded the minority hiring requirement goals. It was a cooperation forged with the Carpenters and all building trade unions and a bonding with the community.”
The Center provides five major program zones: culinary arts; education and learning; performing arts; fitness; and aquatics. Each of the program zones includes spaces and activities designed for all users, from children under three to neighborhood teens to senior citizens. Specific spaces include a 300 seat dining hall and fully integrated teaching kitchen, a Kroc Café, a gymnasium sized for an NCAA regulation Basketball court, ropes course and climbing wall space, a large recreation style swimming pool with current channel, lap lanes, zero depth entry play area, an indoor / outdoor slide, and access to the outdoor sprayground, a full cardio and weight fitness equipment area, men’s, women’s and family changing rooms, a computer lab, teen lounge, library, classrooms, art room, senior lounge, babysitting room, four community meeting rooms, and a 300 seat chapel / theater with a fully equipped sound and audio recording studio suite.
Located in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood, the project was built on a large six acre urban site composed of 54 parcels bought from city and private owners. The project occupies both sides of Dudley Street, with the building, outdoor playgrounds, gardens and parking on the north side and an artificial turf athletic field on the south. The project site is serviced extensively by public transportation, including five MBTA bus lines and a recently renovated train platform, through which over a million people pass monthly on the commuter rail train.
The Architectural Team, the project architect and planner, worked closely with the Salvation Army and the community to configure the program components appropriately on the site as part of the master planning services for the project.
The building façade is a contemporary assemblage of larger and smaller scale volumes, sympathetic to the size, scale and traditional building materials of the surrounding neighborhood context. The project massing at Dudley sand Burgess Streets was arranged to reduce the apparent length of the over 400 foot long building. The facades are composed of ground faced block, metal panel and brick, mixing contemporary and traditional materials to provide durability and texture. Extensive glazing was used on the north and south facades both to take advantage of natural light in the interiors and to provide a strong visual connection between the program spaces and the surrounding neighborhood.
The interior design of the Kroc Center focuses on brightly colored, open spaces with visual connections between programs and lots of natural light. A highly efficient, fluid interior architecture was developed to maximize program space, with as few hallways as possible and more open circulation zones for community interaction. An effort was made to draw the community into the building interior with the use of exterior light fixtures in the lobbies and corridors and broad curving patterns sweeping through the interior and exterior spaces. From the main lobby one can see into all of the main programspaces, including a 26 foot glass wall to the pool with a great view of the slide and water play areas.
Visually, the classroom spaces are connected to the performing arts area, the chapel is connected to fitness and the gym program, and the lobby serves as a central hub to all of the programs. The open nature of the building also helps to reduce staffing by increasing the effective coverage of individuals supervising the spaces while also increasing safety and security. In areas like the Education suite central staff offices with windows allow views of all program areas, including the teen lounge, computer lab and classrooms.
The Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center, completed in April of 2011, was selected as the recipient of a Pride in Construction Project of the Year award by the Construction Institute.
“The Kroc Center is not just a building. It will be a home away from home where the underserved in our community can find a safe environment to learn and grow, both intellectually and spiritually,” said John Fish, Chairman and CEO, Suffolk Construction. “We are extremely proud to have played a role in making the dream of this important new facility a reality.”
In addition to the Boston site, The Salvation Army is building as many as 30 new centers, each endowed with a 2003 gift of between $50M and $100M from Joan Kroc, widow of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc. The intergenerational centers respond to a growing trend in the United States of creating community facilities that serve residents of all ages. We are honored to be a part of the Dudley Square neighborhood and look forward to working with the community for years to come,” said Major William Bode, Divisional Commander of The Salvation Army of Massachusetts.