For twenty years, a small community center in Mason, Tennessee, hosted birthday parties, reunions, memorial services, senior breakfasts, and movie nights for youth.
But since December 2023, the center has been closed and empty.
Fayette County Mayor Rhea “Skip” Taylor said he temporarily closed the center to ensure proper oversight of county property. Community members and advocacy groups see the center’s closure as the latest blow to the small, majority-black city as the region prepares for unprecedented growth.
The Bernard Community Center is located south of Interstate 40, about two miles from Ford Motor Co’s 4,100-acre BlueOval City electric truck and battery plant. The plant is expected to spark a population boom in Tipton, Haywood and Fayette counties when it opens in 2025.
Lue Hall, the center’s director, said it has been run by the community, for the community, since 2004, with little support from the county other than paying the electric bill. Donations and rental fees for private events went toward maintenance, and community members pitched in with donations when money for new equipment was tight. And the center rented the rest of the roughly 7-acre property to a local farmer who harvested soybeans and lumber.
That’s the problem, Taylor said. The community center board didn’t have the authority to sell the wood – county property – without approval from the Fayette County Commission.
When he heard about the logging, “I initially thought it was a theft,” he said in a phone interview. So he locked the center’s doors, called the state comptroller and notified the county commission. Then he began reviewing the center’s financial records.
“In speaking with the auditor, he said we really need to have tighter control over what’s going on out there. You need more formalized agreements and the like,” Taylor said.
The center has since “reopened,” but with new rules approved by the county commission: No private events are allowed, and public events must be registered 10 business days in advance through the mayor’s office. No one from the community has called to reserve the space, Taylor said.
For long-time community members, the closure was sudden and confusing.
“The farmer has been harvesting crops on the land since it opened in 2004, so we don’t understand why he would close the center this time, at this moment, for logging,” Christine Woods, board member of the Bernard Community Center, said Wednesday at a press conference outside the closed building. “The only thing that has changed in this community is that BlueOval is less than two miles away.”
Advocacy group Tennessee for All and BlueOval Good Neighbors, a group seeking a legally binding community benefits agreement with Ford, called on Wednesday for the center to reopen and resume normal operations. They also questioned Taylor’s seat on Ford’s 25-member Equitable Growth Advisory Council, which has been tasked with developing a “Good Neighbor Plan” for investing in the communities surrounding the plant.
What is true, factual and clear is that for the past 20 years this (center) has been in the hands of the community, a place of unity, and now there is literally a sign on the door saying, “No Trespassing.”
– Rebekah Gorbea, Tennessee For All
Ford has never used the Bernard Community Center and has not yet directly responded to BlueOval Good Neighbors’ call for a legally binding commitment. In an earlier statement, the company said investment priorities would be developed by council and “determined by feedback from residents.”
From “Unity” to “No Entry”
Fayette County purchased the approximately 7.5-acre property in 2001 using funds from a federal Enterprise Zone and Enterprise Community Grant intended to benefit the rural community.
Taylor was elected mayor in 2002 and has held that office throughout the community center’s existence.
“The reason we are where we are now is because I didn’t have … good oversight,” he said. “There was poor communication, and because someone thought they had the authority to start selling county property, I had to stop things until we could actually figure out what was going on.”
Rebekah Gorbea, an organizer with Tennessee for All, said the group sees the center’s closure and the new restrictions as symbolic of a “larger, overarching theme of events in West Tennessee.”
Black farming community fights for fair treatment as state expropriates land for road construction for Ford plant
Tennessee for All points to the state comptroller’s attempt in 2022 to take over the city of Mason’s charter and reports that the state under-offered Black farmers for the land needed to build a road connecting the new plant to the highway. The plant and the growth it sparks will inevitably drive up the cost of living, hitting minorities and low-income households hardest, the organization said.
“What is true, factual and clear is that for the past 20 years this (center) has been in the hands of the community, a place of unity, and now there is literally a sign on the door saying ‘No Trespassing,'” Gorbea said.
Taylor said he is working on finding a way to collect rental fees and deposits so private events can resume, but the county is “just not really set up for that right now.”
The farmer was allowed to continue harvesting his land, but his rent will now go to Fayette County coffers under an agreement approved by the county commission.
Taylor was quick to deny any rumors that the county might consider selling the property. The property is in close proximity to BlueOval and in the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s new State Route 194 project area. The land will remain in county hands and the community center “will remain a community center,” he said.
“We communicate better today than we ever have, and if that’s an advantage, I’m glad about it,” Taylor said. “But if the lumber had never been sold, we wouldn’t be where we are now … and if BlueOval had never existed and someone had sold lumber, we’d be doing exactly what I’m doing now.”
