Rafferty family donates $1 million to new Pensacola community center at Legion Field

Special to the News Journal
·2 min read

The city of Pensacola and the Southern Youth Sports Association have partnered to expand programming for Escambia County youth through the new Rafferty Center, which will provide recreational and educational opportunities to hundreds of local youth.

The Rafferty Center will be constructed alongside Legion Field and the Theophalis May Resource Center on West Gregory Street and funded primarily through a $1 million donation from Troy and Ashley Rafferty, along with other private donations.

"Through generous private donations like this, the City of Pensacola will be able to expand our facility in ways we would not have been able to fund without the community support," Mayor Grover Robinson said in a statement. "I am very grateful for the support of Commissioner Lumon May, Councilman Delarian Wiggins, Troy and Ashley Rafferty, and all of our private donors who are making this project possible. Together, we will be able to enhance the programming and services for our youth, providing even more opportunities for our children to build strong minds and bodies."

The Southern Youth Sports Association is a grassroots nonprofit organization that provides educational, recreational, athletic and cultural opportunities to children in the Escambia County community. SYSA offers basketball, cheerleading, baseball, football, tutoring and after-school and GED programs, currently serving approximately 800 youth ages 4 through 17.

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"This will help us expand our capacity to help more children," said May, the Escambia County District 3 commissioner and co-founder and director of SYSA, in a statement. "We need to enlarge our footprint, because we don’t have the capacity in terms of buildings to do the services that we want to do."

Robinson, May and other local leaders joined together to announce the expansion on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which May said was fitting for a community project like this.

"Dr. King always talked about the dream and the hope for tomorrow and hope for the future," May said. "Most of the children we work with are disenfranchised, and this partnership was launched to give them hope and opportunity for the future."

Escambia County Commissioner and SYSA co-founder Lumon May, left, and Troy Rafferty review plans for the Rafferty Center, a $2.7 million project being built alongside the Theophalis May Community Center, thanks to the Rafferty couple's $1 million donation.
Escambia County Commissioner and SYSA co-founder Lumon May, left, and Troy Rafferty review plans for the Rafferty Center, a $2.7 million project being built alongside the Theophalis May Community Center, thanks to the Rafferty couple's $1 million donation.

Additional private contributions to this project were made by Doug Baldwin, Jim and Shirley Cronley, the late Fred Levin, Mike Papantonio and other associates of Levin Papantonio Rafferty Law Firm. Thanks to a bill filed by Rep. Alex Andrade and supported by Reps. Michelle Salzman and Jayer Williamson and Sen. Doug Broxson, the state of Florida has also committed at least $150,000 to the project.

May said SYSA will be working over the next 30-60 days to raise the remaining funds needed before moving the project forward.

To learn more about SYSA, visit sysatigers.org.

For more information about the Theophalis May Resource Center, visit the city of Pensacola website.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Rafferty Center planned alongside Theophalis May Resource Center