The Community College of Rhode Island will no longer participate in the Governor’s Learn365 program alongside the City of Warwick.

Initially the college had partnered with the city to build a community center, which would have been grant-eligible. Those plans, according to Mayor Frank Picozzi, are now scrapped.

CCRI pulled out after deciding that the cost and timeline of building a community center would be unfeasible.

“Based on our assessment, the college believes it would be unable to complete the proposed design and construction within the timelines required for this program,” Amy Kempe, CCRI’s chief of staff, said in a statement to the Beacon. “As such, we notified the City of Warwick that we will not be proceeding with the project.”

Kempe said that CCRI would be looking at alternative options to help Warwick students and improve the relationship between the city and the school.

Picozzi said that CCRI came to share many of his concerns about funding the community center. He had previously said that one of his conditions for accepting Gov. Dan McKee’s Learn365 community center proposal was that the city would not be under any financial obligations for building a center.

“They said they just could not make it work,” Picozzi said. “They were worried about the financial obligation, which I was worried about initially, so they’ve informed the governor’s office and we’re not going to go through with it.”

The city had been eligible for potentially over $5 million in grant funding had they chosen to build the center.

Picozzi emphasized that the city would still be part of the Learn365 program as a whole, and would still be looking to receive grants for the Boys and Girls Club.

According to prior Beacon reporting, CCRI had been looking at renovating older buildings on campus to house the community center, and targeted the conference center, carriage house and greenhouse on their campus as three potential centers aimed at education, health and workforce development.

Picozzi said he would not explore building a new community center without financial support from CCRI because of the costs of creating and staffing the community programs.

“You would have to pay the money back if you don’t meet the goals and you discontinue the programs in the next five years- programs that we don’t have,” Picozzi said. “We would have to create them.”

McKee has described Learn365 as a “concept of change” introduced in April of 2023 in order to help Rhode Island students recover from the pandemic catch up to the performance of those in Massachusetts by providing them with learning opportunities outside of the classroom.

The additional grant funding for community centers came last July after the state received over $81 million in order to build such centers, according to the Providence Journal.