The 23-year-old Bryan Coyle Community Center in Minneapolis is well-used, but the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood’s needs have dramatically outgrown the center’s roughly 15,000 square feet. (The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Home for 16-year-old Abdullahi Hussein is the 26th-floor apartment he shares with his mom and three younger siblings in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood of Minneapolis. But when classes let out at South High School, Abdullahi, like many of his friends, heads straight to the Brian Coyle Community Center for the afternoon and evening.

The one-level building, dedicated in 1993 just as Cedar-Riverside became the epicenter of Minnesota's Somali immigrant community, is where Abdullahi plays basketball in the gym, uses the library to study and attends a rigorous college-prep program. It's also where he works part-time at a new coffee bar that teaches job skills to teens.

That the Coyle center is this densely populated area's hub is clear from the first step inside the open-seven-days-a-week front door. From kids seeking homework help to elders learning English, the center is where many of the state's newest residents naturally gather. The 23-year-old building is well-lit and cheerfully painted, and it rings with laughter, but the neighborhood's needs have dramatically outgrown its roughly 15,000 square feet.

Although there's widespread support to expand the center, progress has been stymied for two years by the mystifying inability of two organizations — the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and the nonprofit Pillsbury United Communities — to rewrite the building's unusual 99-year lease to meet state funding requirements. The Park Board owns the building and land, but Pillsbury raised funds to build the center and manages it.

The space crunch means Coyle management must painfully say no to service organizations wanting offices there and must limit time in the center's one gym, which is used for youth sports, elder fitness classes, weddings and, next month, voting. The center "was built when there were about 500 kids in the area. There are now 1,800-plus kids, and the community is still growing,'' according to DFL legislators Sen. Kari Dziedzic and Rep. Phyllis Kahn.

When the center can't accommodate residents, there are few other places to go. The neighborhood has little open space relative to its population and feels barricaded off by two freeways and two light-rail lines. Kids have little choice but to go back to their apartments, especially in winter.

This community's economic struggles provide more than enough reason to justify the center's expansion with public and private funds. Fifty-seven percent of the state's Somali-American population lives at or close to the poverty line, the highest percentage of any Minnesota minority community. But rising concerns about terrorists' recruitment of young Somali-Americans from Minnesota lends urgency to the center's expansion. The state is home to the nation's largest concentration of Somali immigrants. Eleven men from the Twin Cities have been charged with aiding the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

In a special series of editorials this year, the Star Tribune Editorial Board has called for pragmatic solutions to boost the Somali community's economic opportunities and build resilience to extremism. Breaking through the lease impasse so that the Coyle center can better serve the community is critical. That the center currently doesn't have capacity to serve young adults in their late teens and early 20s, who sorely need gym time and other programs to keep them off the streets, underscores the need.

Some lawmakers have tried to resolve this. Dziedzic championed a measure that was included in the 2014 bonding bill. It granted $330,000 to the Park Board for predesign and design work. But the funding was contingent on the lease terms meeting a state requirements for use of general obligation dollars. The lease length and Pillsbury's broad authority over the building, which includes the ability to demolish it, are at the heart of concerns. No estimate on the expansion's final cost is yet available.

Meanwhile, more than two years have passed. It is clear after speaking with Park Board and Pillsbury officials that leadership is needed to cut through organizational inertia. Lt. Gov. Tina Smith, whose deft touch recently helped end a Twin Cities nurses strike, is the logical choice as a dealmaker. She needs to get involved swiftly so that more of these young Minnesotans prosper and put down roots, as Abdullahi has so successfully done thanks to basketball and friendship at the Coyle center.

"Wherever I go," he said. "This will always be home.''