Sprawling urban growth is placing substantial pressures on metropolitan fringes where designated growth areas absorb a substantial proportion of new urban residents. Resources to ensure that service provision keeps up with this growth have been lacking as promises for schools, medical centres and sports facilities are notoriously late to materialise in these landscapes. Coupled with the rising cost of housing and energy prices and the increasing necessity and expectation of dual incomes, this creates substantial financial and associated time pressures on households in these areas. Community centres are a versatile and adaptable infrastructure that can offer important forms of support in service landscapes that are otherwise under-resourced. This paper presents research conducted in community centres in Melbourne's western suburbs that seeks to analyse how such an infrastructure facilitates people to meet others. The research consists of focus groups with centre managers, interviews with centre participants and participant observation in centre activities and spaces. By focusing on the concept and practice of waiting the paper shows that community centres offer households and residents flexibility, sociality and material support in their coordination of everyday routines and reproductive tasks. I use this analysis to argue for the value of seemingly unproductive spaces and practices of unscripted spaces for their capacity to facilitate slowness, chance encounters and belonging.