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Gov. Ned Lamont speaks at a news conference Thursday concerning $1.5 million in state funding to renovate the former Hill Cooperative Youth Services “Barbell” community center on Carlisle Avenue in New Haven into the Trowbridge Community Youth Center.

The former Hill Cooperative Youth Services “Barbell” community center on Carlisle Avenue in New Haven, photographed Thursday, will become the Trowbridge Community Youth Center.

The former Hill Cooperative Youth Services “Barbell” community center on Carlisle Avenue in New Haven, photographed Thursday, will become the Trowbridge Community Youth Center.

The former Hill Cooperative Youth Services “Barbell” community center on Carlisle Avenue in New Haven, photographed Thursday, will become the Trowbridge Community Youth Center.

Trowbridge Square neighbor Angela Hatley speaks Thursday about $1.5 million in state funding to renovate the former Hill Cooperative Youth Services “Barbell” community center on Carlisle Avenue in New Haven into the Trowbridge Community Youth Center.

NEW HAVEN — For decades, the former Hill Cooperative Youth Services building — aka “The Barbell” — on Carlisle Street was one of the centers of life in the Hill neighborhood, a community center where generations of kids played after-school sports, learned about life and engaged in activities that kept them off the street.

Since closing in 2008, it’s been a blighted presence opposite Trowbridge Square Park.

But soon, with the help of a $1.5 million state grant approved Friday, it will shine again.

“The lights are going back on,” said Gov. Ned Lamont, who came down personally Thursday to announce that money for the project was on the agenda for Friday’s State Bond Commission meeting, where it was approved. Lamont was echoing an earlier statement about the lights by Hill Alder Carmen Rodriguez, D-6.

“You’ve got a very persuasive mayor and a very persuasive Rep. Candelaria,” Lamont said with Mayor Justin Elicker and state Rep. Juan Candelaria, D-New Haven, standing nearby.

Hearing people talk about the role The Barbell used to play in the Hill “just reminds you what a youth center can be for the community, what it can be for the kids,” Lamont said.

One of those people, longtime Hill resident Angela Hatley, said, “I think now more than ever, we need a safe environment — and The Barbell Club always stood for all of that.”

Right now, “we don’t have any kind of community center or senior center or anything,” Hatley said. “We just have our library.”

She said of Lamont, “He gets it. ... He’s always there for New Haven. We’re grateful for his leadership.”

Kaye Harvey, who was the second and final director of The Barbell, said it got its name because original director Sherrill “Bummy” Moore was a boxer. “It was the epicenter” of the community, said Harvey, one of several residents wearing black “Rebirth of The Barbell” T-shirts.

“I am thrilled” to hear it will open again, said Harvey, who lives on West Street. “I am overjoyed.”

Elicker, speaking beneath a portable canopy as kids played on a brand-new splash pad that just went active in Trowbridge Square about three weeks ago, said the project to revive The Barbell as the Trowbridge Community Youth Center was the result of “community members who have been advocating for this vision ... to reignite what used to be the Barbell Club.”

Now, officials and neighborhood advocates “are talking about potential synergy between the Boys & Girls Club and what this could be,” Elicker said.

Until recently, people had lots of good ideas but the city didn’t have the money.

Now, “we have the money. We have the money to activate this building — and that is thanks to the leadership of Gov. Lamont and Rep. Juan Candelaria,” Elicker said.

Candelaria said the idea “has been in conversations for years,” but “thanks to the governor, we have secured funding for the project — that is $1.5 million.”

Elicker also credited state Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, and state Senate President Pro Tempore Martin Looney, D-New Haven, for helping to get the money for the project.

“If all goes well, on Monday the alders will approve” the rest of the money needed for the project, which Elicker estimated would cost a total of about $2.5 milion.

Rodriguez said she expects that money to come from federal American Rescue Plan Act funds.

“This is not just” celebrating. “This is everybody that is standing here today,” said Rodriguez, who was joined at the event by alders Kampton Singh, D-5, and Ron Hurt, D-3, among others.

“The object is to ... put the lights back on for our children. ... We can do this! A lot of people say we can’t, but just look at where we are today!”

That doesn’t mean it will be easy.

“If you go in that building, it’s a bit of a fixer-upper,” said Arlevia Samuel, executive director of the city’s Livable City Initiative. But “it’s important to me that every community gets a community center back.”

Gwen Williams, city director of youth and recreation, who grew up in the neighborhood and went to grammar school just steps away, called The Barbell “a landmark iin our culture, in our history, in our lives.”

City Engineer Giovanni Zinn said of the project, “there’s a lot of work to be done and it starts today.” He said he hopes to finish design for the new center this fall and begin work to renovate it into six flexible classroom spaces surrounding a central gymnasium.

Mark Zaretsky, a Chicago native and longtime New Haven resident, is an award-winning reporter and music writer for the New Haven Register and Hearst Connecticut Media. His beats include East Haven and Branford, regional issues and occasional blues and roots music stories. He also makes a point of knowing where all the good ethnic and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, bars and bakeries are -- and is an unapologetic Cubs, Bears, Blackhawks and Bulls fan. In addition to his work as a journalist, Zaretsky is a front man for The Cobalt Rhythm Kings and The Chicago Dawgs and occasionally performs with Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Mark Naftalin and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.