Boston-based nonprofit developer Urban Edge has launched a fundraising campaign as it seeks to close the gaps in financing for a $21.5 million recreation center in Jackson Square.

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh and supporters including Olympic gold medalist Mike Eruzione and U.S. Olympic women’s soccer team member Kristine Lilly were scheduled to appear at a press conference this afternoon supporting the project. The 2-story center would increase recreational opportunities for the neighborhood’s youth, with a population of 26,000 people between the ages of 5 and 18 living within a 1.5-mile radius of Jackson Square. Plans call for a regulation-size ice rink, turf field and academic and social service space.

Urban Edge recently was awarded $5.7 million in state bond financing to support the facility’s construction. It’s also seeking $4 million in New Market tax credits. Urban Edge also previously raised $1 million, including a $200,000 brownfields cleanup grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and is seeking another $10 million.

The fundraising campaign committee includes Eruzione, Bob Sweeney of the Boston Bruins Foundation, former Boston Bruin Graeme Townshend and Stephanie O’Sullivan of the O’Sullivan Hockey Academy.

Neighborhood residents requested the center be built so that neighborhood youths could have similar recreational opportunities as their suburban counterparts, particularly in the winter months.

“There are thousands of kids in this neighborhood who, right now, don’t have access to those same kind of recreational opportunities,” Eruzione said in a statement.

Only 10 percent of the neighborhood’s youth take part in after-school activities, according to Urban Edge.