Purchasing the building

A community center in Dryden has been a dream for many, many years. While there have been some efforts to create an accessible community space, such as the Dryden Community Cafe, finding the right space has always been an issue. In the spring of 2025, the community learned that the Dryden United Methodist Church would be closing its doors as a house of worship. A dwindling congregation and wider societal trends made it financially unfeasible for them to continue in the tradition that has kept this building and its programs a vital part of the Dryden community for almost 200 years. This sad turn of events has been able to be turned into an opportunity for the wider community.

A small group of community members began to meet to discuss the possibility of turning this former church into a community center space. Led by Thomas Sinclair, former village government official and recently retired from Binghamton University, the Community Center Exploratory Committee convened at first to talk about the needs of the wider community and what an ideal space would include. The people around the table included school officals, representatives from Dryden Rec, social workers, current members of the Dryden United Methodist Church, and others with an interest in creating a community space. Central to these discussions was the availability of funds through the New York Forward Grant program, from which the Village of Dryden had been awarded $4.5 million.

One of the big unknowns at the beginning of this journey was how the Methodist Conference would be pricing the building. The congregation itself was not the owner of the property, which meant that the current congregation members would not be in charge of the building once it was officially closed. Representatives from the congregation would be working with a point person from the larger Conference for any decisions about what was going to happen to the building.

After a roller coaster of meetings and changes, including learning that the NYF funds could not be used to purchase property, the possibility of a third party purchasing the building at the community center occupying a portion of the building and paying rent, the Conference decided on the price for the building that would be acceptable to them and was significantly less than the assessment of the property. The possibility of owning the building outright, giving the DCC the space to really create the community center that we all wanted, was going to happen!

With the able assistance of realtor and local business owner Zoe Leonard and the law offices of Serenna McCloud, a purchase offer was put forward on behalf of the Dryden Center for Community to the United Methodist Conference, and both parties agreed to the offer on August 21, 2025. Fundraising for the purchase could begin!