Hanna’s past mourned, as $10.2M Right Steps project moves forward
As rezoning clears way for child care project at old Hanna Center site, one city council member abstains, saying he ‘cannot countenance the erasure of the last bit of the history of Black Lafayette.'
Support for this edition comes from the Haan Museum of Indiana Art, presenting its Afternoon Tea & Tour to celebrate International Women’s Day on Sunday, March 8, at the Haan Mansion, 920 State St. in Lafayette. For tickets, go to: thehaan.org/event/afternoon-tea-tour/
HANNA’S PAST MOURNED, AS $10.2M RIGHT STEPS PROJECT MOVES FORWARD
A sense of lost history tinged a Lafayette City Council rezoning vote Monday that will clear the way for a $10.2 million child care facility Right Steps is looking to build on a city-owned property that once was the home of the Hanna Community Center.
Perry Brown, a longtime city council member, said he appreciated what Right Steps was doing and the city’s role in making it happen. But he abstained from an otherwise unanimous city council vote Monday out of deference to what the North 18th Street site once was and meant to the Black community in Lafayette’s north end.
“I paced around the floor for a while over this,” Brown said before Monday’s vote. “Because I know how much time I spent at Hanna Center and what I did there – what a lot of people did there. And I cannot put my hand to this. I cannot countenance the erasure of the last bit of the history of Black Lafayette going away. … Something good is going to happen there, but it is painful for me.”
Right Steps, a nonprofit agency that has four child care centers in Greater Lafayette and others in the region, is looking to build a facility that also would be a learning lab for students at the Greater Lafayette Career Academy and Ivy Tech Community College. With room for 182 spots, the project is expected to include some for second- and third-shifts – something Tammey Lindblom, Right Steps CEO, said was a need in the community.
The project will be on land being donated by the city and funded in part by a Lilly Endowment grant through the Community Foundation of Greater Lafayette and money from a local share of Indiana’s Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative (READI) grants. Lindblom said the aim is for an April 2027 opening.
Right Steps previously ran a child care at the Dennis Burton Center next door to the former Hanna Community Center. That building was razed in 2024.
“We have been working on this project for quite some time,” Lafayette Mayor Tony Roswarski told the city council Monday. “We know that child care is an important issue in our community. We think this is a great use for the neighborhood. It’s a great use for that property, because it gives back to the community and it gives back to the neighborhood.”
Roswarski noted that the city had chipped in $1.5 million to development of the Northend Community Center, around the corner on Elmwood Avenue. The Hanna Community Center moved to the Northend Community Center in 2018.
The fate of the old Hanna Center, built in 1982, has been rippling since Right Steps plans emerged and developed to the point of Monday’s rezoning.
“As someone who grew up in the Hanna neighborhood, seeing the rezone request was a shock,” Michael J. Burnett Thompson, a Lafayette resident, said in the days leading up to Monday’s vote.
