New Family Life Center coming to Trenton

TRENTON (WPVI) -- It used to be an old paper factory. now after 25 years of sitting vacant it's coming down - making way for a new 30,000 square-foot Family Life Center being built by Shiloh Baptist church in Trenton.

"We are committed to this urban core and redevelopment of this urban core, but we have to do more than just worship and pray about it. We have to do some action," Reverend Darrell Armstrong said.

Named for the late Dr. Howard Woodson, a former pastor, the Family Life Center on Bellevue Avenue will be the first step in a project called Vision 2020, designed to turn around this troubled area and focus on families and children.

"The center will provide jobs and job training, it will provide parenting skills," Anne Horn of the Steering Committee said.

"Helping people become connected spiritually, emotionally, financially," Eunice Samuels Lewis of the Steering Committee said.

"It'll be a place, a safe place, for the children to come and just enjoy things, play basketball," church member Lisa Smith said.

6-year-old Lavelle Funderburg likes the idea of a Family Life Center in place of this old factory and so does his mom Belinda Spruill.

"Right now I keep my boys in. I don't let them go to no afterschool programs or nothing because I just don't trust it," Spruill said.

Shiloh's pastor says Vision 2020 isn't just about a building, it's about nurturing people and reclaiming lives and neighborhoods.

"Particularly in this neighborhood that has so many challenges, this is the right place where we need this center," Trenton Mayor Eric Jackson said.

Shiloh Baptist hopes to raise $6 million to fund the first phase of this church-driven revitalization in an area now besieged by drugs crime and violence.

"We want to change that and say your zip code 08618 does not mean a life of negativity, it means and portends a life of possibility," Reverend Armstrong said.