The city has been flexible with the popular gymnastic program at
the Wheeler Community Center, but they can’t bend anymore.
BY Christopher Bone Special to the Dispatch
Gilroy – The city has been flexible with the popular gymnastic program at the Wheeler Community Center, but they can’t bend anymore.
Olympic Gold Medalist Li Lu and Senior Olympic Silver Medalist Kim Gussenhoven head All Around Champions Gymnastics and have enjoyed robust enrollment and a healthy relationship with Gilroy for the past two years, but that will end in September because the bulky equipment they use to teach children has prevented art conventions, basketball leagues and health fairs from convening at the center, said Susan Andrade-Wax, Gilroy’s community services director.
“Their equipment includes bars and pummel horses, so you can’t take them down and move them,” Andrade-Wax said. “This has basically rendered the gym useless, and since it’s the only large venue the city has that it doesn’t share, there have been many requests to use it, and that encouraged us to have a conversation with the AAC last December.”
During that meeting, the city and AAC agreed to extend the latter’s contract until the end of August, which Andrade-Wax said is unusual since most city properties run on quarterly leases.
“It really saddens us, but this is our largest venue, and we can’t continue to take it out of commission,” said Andrade-Wax, who had tried to transform the gymnastics program to “matts-only” for the sake of space, “but that’s not the direction they wanted to go in.”
Gussenhoven said now he doesn’t know where AAC will go.
“We have to sell our house,” he said. “This isn’t the city’s fault; it’s just the way business is. It would be a miracle if someone were to save us since unfortunately we can’t find anything now.”
Two years ago commercial space in Gilroy cost 40 to 50 cents per square foot, but now Gussenhoven said the same space costs 70 cents. For a small 2,000-square-foot commercial building, that would translate to a rent increase from $800 a month to $1,400.
Having lived in California since the age of 2, Gussenhoven blamed the price hike largely on what he called “very tricky” commercial real-estate agents and “gross leases” that require leasees to pay property taxes on any value-adding construction that ensues, as well as on the land.
“It’s like, oh, wow, a new building, and it’s 80 cents per square foot,” Gussenhoven said, “but then it turns out you pay any property tax increases, and if you put a new building there, well …”
Despite the daunting prices, the city is pulling for the AAC to find a venue in the city.
“They’re great; their participants love them, and I would love to have them anywhere else,” Andrade-Wax said. “But I don’t know where else to put them. I’m really hoping they find another venue because I’d like to continue our relationship with them.”
Carole Larson wants the gymnastics team to stick around, too. Her 5-year-old daughter, Carole, has been taking lessons at the community center for the past eight months, she said.
“I’m really disappointed to see it go,” Larson said. “They’re really child-friendly, but they also teach quite a bit with positive reinforcement.”
On its Web site, AAC Gymnastics states its “goal is to help students develop motor skills, strength, stamina, coordination, depth perception, confidence, fluidity, and flexibility in a safe, exciting, supportive environment.”
Larson said she would continue enrolling her daughter, who has moved up several levels since she began, if Gussenhoven and Lu found a place elsewhere in Gilroy or Morgan Hill.
“We don’t want to abandon the gymnastics,” she said.
Neither do Gussenhoven and Lu, who will be sending out letters together with the city starting next week, in which they will notify all program participants of its imminent closure.
After September, Andrade-Wax said the city will begin refurbishing the center, painting it anew since the endeavor has been delayed for the past two years.
Lu was 15 when she represented China at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain. Her performance on the uneven bars earned her a perfect 10, and she also went on to win Silver in the balance beam event.
Aside from this, Lu also received the Northern California Women’s Gymnastics Association Compulsory Coach of the Year for 2000-01, and Gussenhoven, an internationally acclaimed vaulting-horse competitor, has 35 years of coaching experience while also having maintained his Professional Safety Certification from the United States Gymnasts Association since 1986.
Asked what he would do if another gymnastic business venture didn’t materialize, Gussenhoven said, “We can’t think of anything else to do.”
