EAST PROVIDENCE — A nonprofit, local community center that has struggled recently with less state and federal aid will need to find another place to house its programs and food pantry.

The City Council unanimously agreed Tuesday night to terminate the East Providence Community Center’s use of the former Union Primary School on Pawtucket Avenue. City Manager Richard Brown was instructed to immediately inform the center’s longtime interim executive director, Cheryl Gibbs, who is also the principal of the Orlo Avenue Elementary School.

“The community center has been a great asset to the city for many years, so I want the city to help them find another location,” Mayor Isadore Ramos Jr. said. “They truly have been a great assistance to our residents and the community.”

The city plans to move its school administration offices into the historic Rumford school by the beginning of the next school year, Brown said. It plans to sell the Platt and Watters school buildings on Burnside Avenue where the offices are currently. Since Union Primary needs electrical upgrades and other renovations, Brown said he would like the community center out within the next two months.

In addition, Ramos and Brown emphasized the center has not made any rental payments for the last seven years. How much they owe hasn’t been disclosed, but a Journal article said the agency has not paid since April 2001 and was $10,000 in arrears in the summer of 2002. At about $10,000 a year, the center may be more than $50,000 in arrears.

Brown said the center believes a previous city manager told the agency it didn’t have to pay rent anymore, but there isn’t any record of such an agreement. When contacted yesterday, Gibbs had no comment on that matter. She also said she didn’t know about the council’s vote and had not thought of alternate plans or other possible venues.

“We recognize this is causing a hardship for them, but this is essential for the continued financial viability of the East Providence School Department,” Brown said. “The other part of this is it is unrealistic for them to believe that they would be getting space rent free. It’s even more unreasonable given our financial position.”

The city is projecting a deficit this year of more than $3.1 million. In addition, Ramos said the Union Primary space is too large for what the community center uses it for. In 1989, the then executive director and treasurer agreed the center outgrew its 1,200-square-foot space on Waterman Avenue. It had four staff members, a few hundred volunteers and provided service to clients on 3,500 occasions. It had literacy programs, winter coat and toy drives, free afterschool tutorials, spaghetti supper fundraisers, lifeline screening for seniors that scans for potential problems related to blocked arteries and strokes, and summer reading programs for the city’s youth.

The then council approved the use of Union Primary in 2001. Before that, the space had been vacant for nearly two years because its students were transferred to the Myron Francis Elementary School. Union Primary was built in the 1890s.

The community center did well in the 1990s, but fell on hard financial times during the early years of this decade. The rent free deal allegedly occurred then, but then-City Manager Paul Lemont could not be reached yesterday.

Gibbs said the center was back in the black for the last three years, but started to struggle financially again in October. She said programs were reduced — leaving only the literacy and tutorial classes and food pantry work — and the center went to half days, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Monday through Friday. She has two part-time staff members, but the center still assists about 400 local families a month with its food pantry.

“We were just starting to pull ourselves up in the last three years and then we really lost a lot of our state funding,” she said yesterday. “The donations are not coming in like they used to either.”

apina@projo.com