BROOKVILLE, JEFFERSON COUNTY - Some people welcome change, but it scares others.  Folks in Brookville learned that lesson when they decided to start a teen center along Main Street.  They had the perfect building and mission - to change the lives of teenagers for the better, but creating the Scarlet Cord took more time, money and faith than they ever imagined.

Jason Walter doesn't know why his bride wore black or why Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve kicked off their wedding, but he has a good reason for why he got married where he did.

“I've been coming since I was 14 so that's almost 20 years now,” Walter said on his wedding day at the Scarlet Cord.

Jason and other people his age around Brookville know it as the Scarlet Cord - the place on Main Street where teens can hang out, see a band, or…

“It's all just a hang out, we come up here, we play cards, get away from the parents and everything,” David Orr, 17, of Brookville said.

… but the older folks have much different memories.

“My brothers used to sit up there on a white fence behind that door, they didn't pay to get in the movies, they'd hold the door, and sneak in,” Don Evans, 70, of Brookville said.

It was built in 1828 as a hotel called the Jefferson House.  From that to the Columbia Theater, the building has been a Brookville mainstay for almost 200 years.  When Steve McPherson had the opportunity to buy it he put it to good use.

“That's when we began to ask the kids that we know and say, hey, here's our idea, we're going to make this place available be a hangout for the weekend, we're going to bring bands in, we're going to have games,” McPherson said.

Not everyone in town liked the idea.

“It was one of those things where a lot of people didn't think it would ever go in the community because things like this had been tried before,” Leslie Michelitsch said.  Michelitsch lives above the Scarlet Cord.

People thought it would be just another place for kids to get into trouble.  The Cord, like any place, has had few problems, but the young ones who are regulars are thankful it's here.

“This just pretty much keeps us out of trouble,” Angie Huffman, 15, of Brookville said.

“We try to do what is best to reach the young people that we're working with at the time,” McPherson said.

They're still doing that twenty years later, but it took a lot of money, hard work and faith to get the theater to look the way it does.  Thanks to local donations and kids wanting to help, McPherson and the “Cord Board” were able to renovate the theater but keep the old charm.

“It's nice that they're letting things grow and working with the future,” Amy Harbison of Brookville said.

McPherson believes this old building is truly special.  Whether it's the starting point for new beginnings or helping people remember the good times, it's those moments that make him want the Cord to be here for another 20 years.

“If we as the Scarlet Cord Teen Center can be here and be a memory of a safe place, a place where I was comfortable to go, a place where I was accepted, a place where the people were there to help me if I needed help, then I think we've met part of the criteria that we've established as a board to reach out to young people,” McPherson said.