Residents, city officials and community leaders gathered Thursday evening at the Broadway Armory in Edgewater to raise complaints against recently announced city plans to move programming from the armory in order to provide temporary shelter for asylum-seekers.

News in May that the city was eyeing the Broadway Armory at 5917 N. Broadway as a possible site immediately sparked questions and concerns from the Edgewater community and nearby residents who take part in Chicago Park District services for seniors and teens in the facility.

Prior to the evening meeting, attended by more than 100 people, Edgewater residents, carrying signs and chanting, held a news conference outside the armory, saying they were left out of the planning process.

Despite intervention from Ald. Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth, 48th, to facilitate meetings and involve the community in the decision-making process , her efforts failed, she said in her latest letter to her constituents.

Manaa-Hoppenworth confirmed in a letter that the regular programming at the armory is set to end this weekend, ahead of the opening of the shelter next Tuesday. However, contrary to initial reports, the senior center and a trapeze school will continue operating as normal. The rest of the park’s programing, including the gymnastics facility, will cease or relocate.

Since she learned of the city’s plan, Ginger Williams, a director of the local senior citizen advocacy group Edgewater Village Chicago, collected signatures against the repurposing of the facility, saying that “the most vulnerable would be displaced.”

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Edie Tillis, a retired schoolteacher who runs programming at the armory, said the news made her sad. She carried a pink petition form and said she’d already collected 500 names. She said the lack of programs for youths will have a deep effect on the community.

“I’m so accustomed to working with children and with young people, and encouraging them. When you work as long as I have with young people, many times I can look on their faces and I can know something is wrong or something is going on,” she said. “Now they’re taking the whole building.”

Troy McMillan, a member of Save Our Broadway Armory Park, called the community center “sacred.”

“This is the heart of our community of this ward,” she said. “It serves as a community center and a safe place for some of our most vulnerable residents, our at-risk youth, our low-income working families, our older adults, our immigrants, our migrants, our refugees. These are our people.”

Pat Sharkey, a convener of the Coalition of Edgewater Block Clubs and Residents’ Associations, said the city is taking away programming from a community of thousands. Sharkey said the building is meant to be used for programming, not housing.

At least 300 migrants are expected to be moved in, mostly adults with children, according to Manaa-Hoppenworth, though Sharkey said that number is closer to 600. Though the shelter is set to be temporary, there is no clear timeline for how long the shelter will be in operation.

“We want to talk to you about what that really looks like and what it means and what we can do to make it work,” Cristina Pacione-Zayas, deputy chief of staff for Mayor Brandon Johnson, said to residents who sat in folding chairs in the armory gymnasium. “We are not here permanently, we are not here for multiple years, we are here as a temporary shelter.”

Nearly 1,000 asylum-seekers continue to sleep on floors of Chicago police stations as the city grapples with finding and equipping buildings to become adequate settlers. Several park facilities, including the Leone Beach Field House in Rogers Park, Brands Park’s field house in Avondale and Piotrowski Park in Little Village, have been turned into makeshift shelters.

Matt Doughtie, an emergency coordinator with the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications, explained to residents that city shelters must meet certain safety requirements to be allowed to house asylum-seekers. He said officials chose the armory because it was “publicly owned and ready to go.”

Pacione-Zayas said the city scrambled to receive three buses from Texas with migrants on Thursday alone. Every day more migrants are arriving to Chicago, mostly from Central and South America.

“Beginning August 1, the Broadway Armory will serve as a temporary shelter due to the overwhelming and growing need for shelter,” read four screens that faced the audience, causing residents to boo loudly.

The senior center at the armory is a satellite center of the Department of Family and Support Services where low-income seniors have access to critical services and activities. When the shelter opens, the senior dining center will continue to serve meals, but the computer lab and pingpong room will be closed.

Though the senior center and the rapeze school, a private business inside the gymnasium, will remain in operation after the shelter opens, sharing the space may not be feasible, said Birgit Hampton, the new owner of the trapeze school.

But even if it’s not the “most ideal situation, we’re grateful the city is at least trying to accommodate us,” she said.

Initially, Hampton said she was upset when she learned that city officials had designated the armory as a shelter without taking into consideration the hundreds of seniors and children that frequent the space consistently.

Hampton said that while she feels sympathy for the asylum-seekers and understands that the humanitarian crisis is forcing the city to take drastic measures to repurpose buildings into shelters, safety is her main concern.

When the gym in the armory was turned into a homeless shelter during the early months of the pandemic, some of the school’s equipment was damaged or stolen, Hampton said.

But city officials have promised separate entrances for the school, the senior center and the shelter, she added. “That’s my hope.”

The armory is a former National Guard facility that has five gyms and 13 meeting rooms. It became an important community hub for people in the area and surrounding neighborhoods in 1985, hosting programs and services for underserved communities including seniors and teens, according to Manaa-Hoppenworth.

Stella Campbell, 72, and her husband Ken, 73, said the center is “of extreme importance” to the seniors in the area, who depend on the hot lunches and the services provided for them at low cost. “There are few places like this in the city,” she said.

Ken Campbell said that what angers him is the city’s decision to repurpose the space without taking the community’s concerns or suggestions into consideration.

“There are hundreds of other buildings that could have been turned into a shelter where maybe less people would have been affected if they had to cancel or relocate the services they provide,” he said.

Volunteers for the 48th Ward Neighbors for Justice set up a table outside the armory to collect donations.

“Support your new neighbors!” read their sign.

nsalzman@chicagotribune.com

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