Next board resignation over city center project

By David Hohendorf

A member of the board of directors of the senior citizen group Next, Stuart Jeffares, has resigned his position with the non-profit over his dissatisfaction with how the city of Birmingham, including its city commission, has handled the effort to create a permanent home for the senior citizens organization.

Jeffares, a local real estate business owner and a long-time member of the Birmingham Planning Board, has been a community member of the Next board for over a decade.

The Next board, an ad hoc committee, city officials and the city commission have been dealing for the past two years with a proposed facility to house the senior services group. The city, in 2023, purchased the YMCA building at 400 E. Lincoln as a location for Next which for decades has operated out of a Birmingham school building but the district has plans to put it to use as an early childhood center.

The decision was made to demolish the E. Lincoln building and replace it with a new structure to house Next, the YMCA and community center activities, estimated to cost about $30 million. City officials are expected to place on the ballot this November a bond issue which if approved would underwrite the new building, paid for with a 20-25 year annual millage that could be in the neighborhood of $144 for an average homeowner in the city under one proposal now being discussed.

Jeffares said that his resignation should not be viewed as indicating there is not strong support from other members of the Next board, but he could “no longer put on the ‘game face’ needed to work toward developing a new Senior Center that is well on its way to being this city commission’s own North Old Woodward Project debacle that went down in flames at the polls in 2019.”

In written correspondence with Downtown Newsmagazine, which appears in its May issue, Jeffares raised a number of questions about the new proposal along with criticism of the city commissioners and how they have handled Next members at public meetings which he compared “to the equivalent of verbal waterboarding,” reflecting what others in the community have observed over the last year

Jeffares was also critical of the city including the YMCA in the proposed senior center, noting that in doing so “nearly triples the amount of the bond request of the taxpayers.” Further, Jeffares notes that inclusion of the YMCA in the project “necessitates significant thrifting of needed elements for seniors to offset the YMCA burden,” which he said “burdens the city with significant risk by constructing a building for an outside organization who can’t even sign a real lease because of their dire financial situation (after we gave them $2M!).”

Many of the issues raised by Jeffares are similar to what members of the public have been raising over the past year.

In terms of the latest news about the new building, city and Next officials met with representatives of the firms contracted on the project last week to discuss rapidly increasing costs of construction, some say in large part due to the levying of tariffs by President Donald Trump which has created turmoil in the international supply market.

City and Next officials are reportedly now looking at reducing the size of the building to eliminate $8 million in costs of the project, some sources say, although there has been no official announcement by the city yet.