GILROY
– With a bulldozer and backhoe as a backdrop, approximately 50
dignitaries and homeless advocates gathered in north Gilroy Friday
afternoon to celebrate, well, a pile of rubble.
GILROY – With a bulldozer and backhoe as a backdrop, approximately 50 dignitaries and homeless advocates gathered in north Gilroy Friday afternoon to celebrate, well, a pile of rubble.
The mishmash of concrete and boards used to be the Serra Apartments, a former motel at 9345 Monterey Road that nonprofits South County Housing and the Emergency Housing Consortium will replace with a state-of-the-art center to help transition the homeless into stable and productive lives.
The planned Sobrato Transitional Center will feature a 140-bed year-round reception center with a bevy of social services such as job training and a 60-unit transitional apartment complex with case managers. Gilroy’s current homeless shelter, the National Guard Armory on Wren Avenue, provides more limited services and operates in winter only.
Friday’s ceremony was meant to help celebrate the demolition of the crumbling old motel and the practical beginning of the development phase for the project. The Gilroy Fire Department helped clear the site by burning part of the motel down in a recent training fire.
“I’m excited beyond belief,” said a thrilled Maria Skoczylas, a longtime shelter volunteer and community activist who spoke to thank all of the project’s supporters and the local ministerial alliance.
“All the people have been sincere, energetic and so very faithful,” she said. “It’s been a long, long time and they’ve continued to do that.”
Many other proponents who fought for the center during community meetings were present, including District 1 County Supervisor Don Gage and Mayor Tom Springer, EHC Executive Director Barry Del Buono and Mary Iserman and Jan Lindenthal from South County Housing.
Gage credited volunteers for keeping the pressure on.
“They’re the ones that kept this alive,” he said. “We just followed their direction.”
Also present was Ray Trimble, son of late Gilroy homeless advocate Florence Trimble. Officials will name a street in the development “Trimble Court” in her honor.
“Obviously things like this always bring back lots of emotions … ,” he said in an interview. “It was great to meet some of the people who worked so hard with her.”
Pastor Mark Milwee of First Baptist Church blessed the eight-acre plot during the ceremony.
Officials hope to begin construction on the apartments in late 2004 and the center in April 2005. Construction of 13 market-rate homes that will help fund the project is slated to begin this week.
The reception center is expected to cost $6.4 million and the transitional apartments $15 million. Officials have already sent out a bevy of government and private funding applications and expect to hear answers back on some as early as this month.
Prospective sources range from state Proposition 46 to county affordable housing funds and the public-private Housing Trust of Santa Clara County.
“We can build something new that everyone can be proud of,” Lindenthal said.
