Woburn opens Community Resource Center

When Woburn Mayor Mike Concannon took office at the start of 2024, one of his goals was to explore the city’s role in meeting the needs of residents and find creative solutions to engage the community.

A year later, the city opened the Woburn Community Resource Center, a “community outreach hub” where residents can meet with staff, learn about local volunteer opportunities, and get to know their city and neighbors.

The center is located in a 1,700 square-foot office suite in Cummings Park that was donated by Cummings Properties for a two-year period. The space, which can be seen in this welcome video, has a training room, office, digital workstations, common room, and a small meeting space. The center is open for residents to meet with staff outside of City Hall hours, and can be reserved for group meetings and trainings.

“I always knew that there were people in Woburn who needed help,” Concannon said. “I also knew that there were a whole lot of entities operating in the Woburn area who provide help. What I felt was lacking was some sort of connectivity, a better way of putting those pieces together.”

Concannon brought in Samantha Stone to serve as assistant to the mayor for community outreach and communications. She has an extensive background in marketing and hosts a Woburn local access television show. She also serves as director of the Community Resource Center, managing the space, recruiting partners and connecting residents to training and/or services.

“The first thing I needed to do was really understand what we needed,” Stone said. “I spent my first nine months meeting with hundreds of individual residents, running job fairs and volunteer expos, and meeting regularly with all of our service providers.”

One of her biggest takeaways was that City Hall doesn’t have the space or hours for group meetings and one-on-one conversations with stakeholders. Concannon and Stone organized the feedback into a wishlist and discussed those needs with Cummings Properties CEO Dennis Clarke and other Cummings staff, who offered the space in West Cummings Park.

“They delivered a blank slate to us that was perfect,” Stone said.

The city was able to furnish and equip the space at no cost to taxpayers by circulating an Amazon wishlist and recruiting volunteers to build donated furniture and decorate the space. Woburn’s IT department installed unused city desktops and other technology.

“We’re treating this like a pilot program,” Stone said. “Can we run this and prove its value for a couple of years without spending any taxpayer dollars?”

Concannon and Stone said the community-backed effort played a large role in how quickly the resource center came together.

“That was possible because we engaged a lot of people in the process of making the space a reality,” Concannon said.

While other municipalities may not have the resources to quickly start up a new service, he said engaging partners could offer a solution.

Some of the center’s scheduled programming includes a grief support group organized by Tufts Health Care, a workforce development program for entry-level manufacturing positions, and a free grantwriting workshop.

Concannon said that building partnerships and achieving public-private success means identifying community members who are deeply familiar with the existing service and community landscape.