Gilroy
– In a few short years, teens in this city might have a new
place to hang out.
City Councilman Craig Gartman and Jeff Orth, a member of the
Gilroy Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors, are in the early
stages of developing a new center for Gilroy teens.
Gilroy – In a few short years, teens in this city might have a new place to hang out.
City Councilman Craig Gartman and Jeff Orth, a member of the Gilroy Chamber of Commerce’s board of directors, are in the early stages of developing a new center for Gilroy teens.
The center would be a privately run, nonprofit organization and would be geared toward Gilroy High School and Gavilan College students, Gartman and Orth said. Teens could come to the center to watch movies, listen to music, play sports, do homework or just hang out together. Hours of operation could be from after school until about 9pm and all day Saturday and Sunday.
“Right now, we’re mainly just trying to get an idea of the interest that might be out there and get some input from the community,” Gartman said. “We’ve been talking to the youth commissioners, and asking them to get the word out and try to get some ideas from their fellow classmates.”
The new teen center would not compete with the current Gilroy Youth Center at 7400 Railroad St., Gartman and Orth said, as that facility is geared more toward kids in elementary and middle school. Rather, the new center would serve as a gathering place for local teens.
Ideally, Gartman said, big-business sponsorships would provide the bulk of the center’s funding, with supplemental support from smaller businesses, personal donations and fund raising.
The center’s workers could be a mix of volunteers and paid employees, perhaps part-time employed teens or parents of teens, Gartman said.
To address safety concerns, Gartman and Orth said the facility would include exterior lighting, general rules and regulations and full-time supervision. Teens could use punch cards as their “ticket” into the center, which they’d present to a supervisor upon arrival along with emergency contact information.
Gartman and Orth said they envision the teen center being located west of Gilroy High School adjacent to the baseball fields, on a roughly 10,000-square-foot property. The county owns that land but allows the city to use it. The property currently is used for overflow parking for the Garlic Festival and high school baseball games, but it could be purchased from the county for the teen center.
Other ideas for location include a lot about two blocks away from the high school’s south end, or perhaps housing the teen center in the high school’s current student center, Gartman said.
Gilroy Mayor Al Pinheiro said he would support a new teen center and thinks it would be well used by Gilroy’s teens.
“Right next to the high school – if that’s where (the teen center) would go – would be a good place because the teens would know it’s there,” Pinheiro said, adding that a disadvantageous location is part of the reason why many kids in Gilroy might not know about or use the existing youth center.
Adam Henig, recreation program coordinator for the city of Saratoga, said that city’s teen center, called the Warner Hutton House Teen Center, has flourished largely because of its close proximity to Saratoga’s Redwood Middle School.
“It’s all about location. The teen center can be only one room, but if the primary audience is right there, they’ll come,” Henig said. “You have to remember, these kids can’t drive, and their parents are at work – that’s why the kids are there in the first place. So it has to be accessible.”
The biggest ongoing challenge for Warner Hutton is funding, Henig said. Although the city of Saratoga funds about half of Warner Hutton’s expenses – which would not be the case for Gilroy’s teen center, said Gartman and Orth – the other half comes from private donations and fund raising, Henig said. When the economy is slow, people usually don’t make funding a teen center a top priority, he said.
“When push comes to shove, people tend to think, ‘Oh, they’re just kids,'” Henig said. “When you don’t get the big donations, you feel it. We don’t always know if we’ll be here next year.”
At Gilroy High School, 10th graders Liz Garza and Natalie Scettrini said they think a teen center would be popular, but probably only with teens who enjoying socializing and group activities – which isn’t the case with all teens, they said.
The two girls said they’d use the teen center mainly because they get bored after school and on weekends.
“I usually just go home (after school) and get on the Internet,” Garza said.
Launching a new teen center is something Orth said he has wanted to do for a few years.
“When my kids were teens, I noticed there was really no place for them to go. There was nothing for them to do,” he said.
Orth’s daughter, Stephanie, applied for and was selected in August to serve on the Youth Commission, a six-member group of teens selected by the city council and the mayor to represent Gilroy’s youth. During an August interview to select the current youth commissioners, council members and the mayor asked applicants what they would do to get more of Gilroy’s teens involved in the community. The most popular response: Build a teen center.
Gartman and Orth are in the midst of gathering additional ideas from youth commissioners about what the center might offer. Gartman also has been studying youth centers around the country via the Internet to get an idea of what kind of organization and activities might work best.
After devising a clearer plan of what the center’s programs and organization might look like, Orth said, they’d like to see plans take flight as soon as possible.
“We don’t want this to be a long and drawn-out process,” Orth said. “We’d be thrilled to get moving on this next year.”
Gartman called the plans at this point “purely conceptual.”
“First we need to figure out the what,” Orth said. “Then we’ll figure out the how.”
For more information, call Craig Gartman at 710-6090 or Jeff Orth at 842-2716.
