Salt Lake City's west side acquired a huge gift Friday.

Rose Park, one of the city's most needy neighborhoods, will soon gain a new community center courtesy of Beneficial Financial Group and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Foundation.

The first-of-its-kind center will educate adults and children, house an Intermountain Health Care clinic and offer child care while parents attend adult education classes and volunteer at area schools. A $300,000 donation will pay for half of the new Beneficial Financial Group Rose Park Community Center to be built on the grounds of Rose Park Elementary, 1105 W. 1000 North.

Meanwhile, backers are busy raising the rest of the money needed to finish the project.

"It's a generous gift, and it will be well received," said City Councilman Carlton Christensen, who represents the Rose Park neighborhood.

The gift was announced Friday by LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley at a downtown banquet celebrating Beneficial's 100th year.

The center will allow the church-owned Beneficial to leave "a lasting legacy along the Wasatch Front" where it was founded, President Hinckley said.

The community center "will be attached to, and become part of, the Rose Park Elementary School," he added.

Beneficial, founded as a life insurance company on the principle of helping widows and orphans, can use the center to continue its mission of helping families, President Hinckley said

"This community center will be used to strengthen individuals and families," he said.

The center will give IHC, which already runs a makeshift clinic at the elementary school, a more functional home. The clinic is desperately needed in an area where many parents and their children don't have access to health care, Christensen said. Already the clinic has identified likely fatal heart murmurs in uninsured children that wouldn't have been detected otherwise, Christensen said.

Beneficial CEO Kent Cannon said the company chose Rose Park because more than 80 percent of the area students live below the federal poverty line, and more than half have limited English proficiency.

"It just seems to be an area where we can really make a difference," Cannon said.

The center will support Beneficial's goal of "building stronger families" by teaching family-building classes such as language, nutrition, parenting and job application skills, Cannon said. The facility will also have a mentoring program for elementary students.

Beneficial has been in contact with other interested donors and should be able to gain enough funds for the center in short order, Cannon said.

Community advocate Pamela Atkinson, who has worked with Beneficial on the project, said she expects the center will open this winter.

"We're hoping every child in the school who needs a mentor will get one through the center," she said. Such mentoring will go a long way toward bridging the "achievement gap" between ethnic minorities and their Caucasian counterparts, she said. Over three-fourths of the students at Rose Park are ethnic minorities.

Beneficial also announced Friday it had created 40 new $2,000 college scholarships for individuals "who have showed resilience in overcoming life challenges." Some of those scholarships have already been awarded while officials are still considering applications for others.

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