Key outdoor music venue for city and Garlic Festival still in
need of major repair
Gilroy – As the days close in on this year’s Garlic Festival, another year has gone by without major renovation to the crumbling and outdated amphitheater.
Although the local Rotary Club has put forth an idea for what they would like to do, that plan has been put on the backburner as the club tries to figure out what is feasible for them to take on.
“It seems (the amphitheater) can clearly stand to be upgraded. I think that the improvements not only benefit the Garlic Festival but the rest of the community itself,” said Brian Bowe, the new executive director of the Garlic Festival. “The impression I got from talking to the members from Rotary is that it was going to take some time.”
Jeff Orth, the current president of the Rotary Club, said Rotary representatives have met with the city about three to four times recently and will have a club meeting with all its members to see what the organization officially wants to do.
Orth said that he does not blame the city for the shortcomings of the amphitheater but said the theater is falling to the point of disrepair and wants to turn it around and make it a point of pride for the community. He said he wants the “embarrassment to become a jewel. This is a wonderful city and we can do better than this.”
The amphitheater was built by the city into a heavily wooded hillside slope in the southwest corner of Christmas Hill Park in the late 1960s.
In 1983, the Garlic Festival Association built additional seating to bring the amphitheater’s capacity to more than 300 and in the early ’90s the upright steel structures made to support a roof over the theater’s stage were constructed, although no roof was ever erected.
A preliminary plan by the Rotary Club involves five phases in renovating the amphitheater. The first step, Orth said, involves putting up a new canopy. He hopes that by getting the canopy up by the end of the year would give the whole project momentum and get people excited about the plan.
The second phase would see an expansion of the current stage. Working on the amphitheater itself would be the third step which would call for renovating the lighting and electrical outlets and “pulling out all the crappie railroad ties.” Phase four would be adding a dressing room/utility room so performers could change but would also be used as a storage area. The last part would be to renovate or even demolish the existing snack bar and maybe add a concession sales area.
This plan has not been OK’d by the members and will be discussed and voted on starting July 25. Orth said some of the problem was that there may have been too many hands in the cookie jar.
“It’s one of those things where people were coming together with different ideas and different objectives,” Orth said about the handling of ideas between different members and city officials. “But now a level of trust has been built up between all of us over time.”
Although there was a rocky start to the talks, things have started to settle down and Orth said that the stars seem are finally beginning to align. “I feel more encouraged than ever,” he said.
Orth credits Rotary Club member Keith Higgins with helping move the project forward. He said this project has been five years in the making and Higgins has helped push it ahead with his ideas.
Susan Andrade-Wax, Gilroy’s community services director, said the city is very excited with the proposal that has been put to the city. She said the city has meetings with Rotary members, but now it is up to the club to choose what it wants to go forward with. But Andrade-Wax said the city will be happy with anything they want to do, understanding that this is a huge project and that costs could effect what the club wants to do versus what the club will actually do.
“We’ll be here with open arms when they tell us what they are going to do,” Andrade-Wax said.
