From vacated industrial workspace, to neighborhood senior center
to spacious park with promise: The Gilroy Community Youth Center
has a nomadic history, but concern for its well-being is
permanent.
From vacated industrial workspace, to neighborhood senior center to spacious park with promise: The Gilroy Community Youth Center has a nomadic history, but concern for its well-being is permanent.
The Gilroy City Council voted Monday to revamp the Youth Center’s existing home at the San Ysidro Park Recreation Building on 7700 Murray Avenue.
The plan will remodel and update facilities for a cost of $648,000, with a possible maximum building addition of 290 square feet. Three additional site improvements including repaving the asphalt basketball courts with concrete will total $212,000.
Though council members and city personnel envision a sparkly new facility for Gilroy’s youth in the distant future, Councilman Perry Woodward said polishing up the interim location at the San Ysidro location is the most feasible and realistic approach for now – as opposed to demolishing what they’ve got and starting from scratch.
“Unfortunately, the reality is we’re not going to be building a new youth center anytime soon,” said Woodward, agreeing that the San Ysidro Building is in need of renovation. “We’ve got to do what we can with the funds that we have … that’s the obvious answer.”
According to a proposal created by a consultant for the city, construction would commence Sep. 8, 2011 and continue until Jan. 1, 2012.
David Stubchaer, senior civil engineer and operations manager for the project, said that time frame is subject to change.
Ideally the city could sell the center’s former stomping grounds – a weathered 72-year-old PG&E building near Railroad and Sixth streets – sooner than later and put the money toward San Ysidro building improvements.
Washing their hands of the superfluous edifice, however, could take patient fishing for the right buyer. Selling a seismically unsafe unreinforced masonry building doesn’t happen overnight.
Councilman Dion Bracco said the property at Sixth and Railroad streets isn’t on the market yet, and cogitated over the arrival of the California high-speed rail as a variable that could affect the location’s fate.
“It’s tough with that building, because that’s one of the corridors for high-speed rail if it comes through there,” he said. “We’re really up in the air until high-speed rail decides where they’re going to put their tracks.”
He breaks in dialogue for a lighthearted aside to the $45-billion, 800-mile system slated for operation in 2020 with a stop in Gilroy.
“Maybe it will be better if the rail goes right through it.”
Rick Smelser, acting public works director and city engineer for Gilroy, said there’s no estimated guess for how long it could take the property to sell.
“These URM buildings are difficult to say the least,” he chuckled.
URM’s are structures containing masonry materials that are not braced by reinforcing beams, thus posing a safety hazard in an earthquake.
Such is the lot of the old PG&E building, a now vacant casualty of Gilroy’s URM retrofit ordinance. The November 2006 regulation gave URM building owners in Gilroy three years to complete retrofit work, which the Council extended Monday to June 30, 2011.
From his understanding, said Woodward, the former location at Sixth and Railroad Streets was popular with those who visited, but an awkward place for a youth center.
Regardless of what happens to the old PG&E building, the City Council is moving forward.
A brand new Youth Center may be a distant light at the end of the tunnel, but parties involved sound positive and resolute moving on one step at a time.
“We’ll move forward with the remodeling of the (San Ysidro) building, which is serving right now as our interim youth center,” Bracco explained. “In the meantime we’ll try to sell this (PG&E) building off. But regardless if the building sells or not, we’re moving forward with updating this San Ysidro building so the youth have a safe place to be in the afternoon.”
It’s a ways down the road, but Bracco emphasized his commitment to seeing a new facility built in Gilroy. He said the possibility of obtaining grant money to make it happen was discussed in Monday night’s council meeting.
Similarly, Stubchaer doesn’t think the current location is nearly big enough for a permanent youth center, but said it’s serving its purpose well as an interim. He believes a new building is in the city’s facilities master plan, and is listed at an estimated 9.5 million dollar cost.
Smelser agrees constructing a brand new facility is several years away.
“It is in the plan to use the proceeds from that sale to fund design construction of the interim center,” he said. “We will go ahead and complete the youth center. Working on that is our top priority.”
As far as the current venue goes, Bracco said the San Ysidro location – which is nine and one-fourths of an acre with picnic and barbecue areas, restrooms, jogging and hiking paths, a children’s play area, open play field and basketball and handball courts – is spacious and accommodating for the number of people who visit.
It is, after all, a park.
The San Ysidro Building could use some Botox, though.
“It’s not a user-friendly building right now,” said Bracco. “We’ll bring it all up to date.”
Right now it has a small kitchen, a storage room and bathrooms on the outside. Sleek improvements and additions will include – to name a few – skylights, a reconfigured kitchen area, indoor unisex bathroom, lockable storage closet, office area, paint job and new signage.
Greg Garcia, a recreation coordinator with the City of Gilroy, has worked for the city since 1996. He’s seen the Youth Center through thick and thin as it migrated from the PG&E location, to temporary headquarters at the senior center at 7371 Hanna Street to its present location.
“When we closed down our (Sixth and Railroad street) location, we were kind of chasing our tail,” he recalled.
Comparing their current location to the PG&E Building, both have plus and minuses – but San Ysidro is decidedly better, Garcia said. He describes it as comfortable and “free range,” musing kids can play football on real grass, instead of inside on artificial grass. He also praises the park’s condition and surrounding hiking trail, which he said is maintained diligently.
“It’s a little bigger and closer to the people that need the program,” he concluded, but pointed out the PG&E site had boxing amenities and private offices.
According to Garcia, the number of kids who filter in and out of the center can hit around 20 on a rainy day during the winter, to more than 150 during summer months. He said on average, numbers can range between 35-45 daily.
