In March, residents of the Lower East Side will have a new center with swimming pool, gym, and dance studio. It’s not a high-rise condominium, but rather University Settlement’s new community center.

On Wednesday, the bigwigs behind the 42,000-squarefoot facility on the corner of Houston Street and Bowery had a party.The spotlight was reserved for the project’s developer, AvalonBay Communities Inc., represented by its senior vice president of development, Frederick Harris.

“Public/private partnerships, like the one that led up to the opening of this wonderful new community center, are the wave of the future,” the executive director of University Settlement, Michael Zisser, said.

The building cost $14 million to construct.

***

Bronx-native Nathan Lebron is set to receive a master’s degree in information technology from Harvard this spring. If he is tapped for a commencement speech, he’ll be ready. As an honoree at the Friends of Saint Dominic’s 25th annual Business and Labor Awards Dinner, Mr. Lebron took the stage before 1,200 guests, who learned of the obstacles that Saint Dominic’s had helped him overcome on his way to the Ivy League.

At the age of 15, Mr. Lebron moved into the Gunther Avenue Group Home supervised by Saint Dominic’s.

“It was a transformational experience for me. I hadn’t been a regular teenager in years,” Mr. Lebron said.

Growing up in the South Bronx was not easy.When he was 13 years old, he underwent surgery for removal of a tumor in his spinal cord.

At the Gunther Avenue Group Home, caseworkers helped him focus on school work and job responsibilities.When he graduated from the State University of New York with a double major in computer science and Spanish literature, he requested two additional copies of his diploma, which he brought to his former home in the Bronx.

Mr. Lebron is the information systems director of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown. In 2003, he started the Lebron-Michelle Scholarship Fund with the family of a young girl who had been hospitalized with him but lost her battle with leukemia.

“One of the things that discourages kids is the cost of school. This is my opportunity to give back, to help them and memorialize a good friend’s loss,” Mr. Lebron said. The fund seeks out young adults who have lived in a group home or orphanage, completed high school, and been accepted to an accredited college.

The Friends of Saint Dominic’s presented awards to Unity International Group Chief Executive Officer Peter Striano and Jones Lang LaSalle Northeast Regional Director Raymond Quartararo for their long-standing support of Saint Dominic’s Home.

The dinner raised $1.1 million, 2.7% of the annual budget of Saint Dominic’s Home, which runs 52 facilities in New York City, Rockland County, and Orange County, and serves more than 2,000 children, adolescents, and adults.

***

Poker is chic these days, so New Yorkers have been doing a lot of gambling for charity. High Water Women, an organization for women in the financial industry, presented a Casino Night at Roseland to benefit Inwood House, Iris House, Women in Need, and Partnership With Children. More than 700 high-rolling men and women played blackjack and roulette, raising more than $750,000.

“The evening surpassed our own expectations,” a High Water Women board member, Alexandra Poe, a partner at WilmerHale, said.

The group has increased its financial muscle since its first fund-raising outing in June, which raised $200,000. Among High Water Women’s founders are the president of Capital Market Risk Advisors, Leslie Rahl, and a Global Macro Portfolio Manager at Kingdon Capital Management, Kathleen Kelley.

agordon@nysun.com