Civil war over a senior center in Central Park

LOU’S VIEW

A new senior center is a great idea. Huntington Beach certainly needs one. The Rogers Senior Center is old, inconveniently located and undersized in comparison with senior centers in other Orange County communities.

Both Vic and I would like to see a new senior center built, especially a 45,290-square-foot beauty like the one the city envisions.

The problem for me is where the city plans to put it.

City officials want to use five acres of Central Park that are just south and west of the new gravel parking lot at Talbert Avenue and Goldenwest Street, known as Alternative Site 1. The contours of this scooped-out depression and hill were left behind in the 1950s when dirt was removed to build the San Diego Freeway (405). The exposed subsoil grows mostly wild radish, mustard, and nonnative grasses. But it is still open space and provides habitat for ground squirrels, says phoebes, and wintering American pipits. Hawks and coyotes hunt the deer mice and lizards that live there. Children ride their bikes down the steep hill. That’s probably not a great idea, but this remnant of Huff Hill is about the only place left in town for kids to play in the dirt.

The area is currently designated in the park master plan for medium-intensity use with picnic facilities, restrooms, a tot lot and parking. To build the senior center and associated gardens, the city will need to change the master plan for this area from medium-intensity to high-intensity use. A new lot for the proposed senior center would add parking for a whopping 200 cars. It would bring cars into the central portion of Central Park, eating up even more open space. This lot would be in addition to the gravel lot that was built recently by the Friends of Shipley Nature Center on the upper level.

The Community Services Commission approved the change in the park’s master plan with only one dissenting vote. The next step is probably a vote by City Council. With many prominent backers of the change ? Ralph and Charlene Bauer, Bob and Shirley Dettloff, and others ? it will most likely pass.

But thanks to Measure C, which was designed to protect our parks, the plan still needs to go to a vote of the people. Many people are angry over having park open space eaten up by more buildings and parking lots. They plan to fight the location of the new senior center in Central Park. There are other possible locations for the new center, although admittedly they all have some drawbacks. Personally, I’d love to have a new senior center like the one that is planned. I just don’t think that this part of Central Park is the right place for it.

VIC’S VIEW

I have some personal familiarity with senior centers. Over the past 12 years, I have taught adult education classes at senior centers in Laguna Beach, Laguna Niguel, Aliso Woods, Mission Viejo, Orange and Irvine. With the exception of Laguna Beach, all of these communities have modern facilities to provide for the needs of their senior citizens. The Rogers Center in Huntington Beach is embarrassing in contrast.

At the Community Services Commission meeting on May 9, many people spoke against putting a new senior center in Central Park. No one denied that Huntington Beach needs a new senior center. The matter at issue is where it should go. The bad news is that there is no perfect place. Lou has admitted that all of the alternative sites have drawbacks. I think those drawbacks are fatal.

Of the alternative sites, only one seemed at all realistic to me; it was the only one mentioned by any of the speakers at the commission meeting. Referred to as Alternative 2, it’s at the northwest corner of Goldenwest Street and Ellis Avenue, also within Central Park.

The problem with Alternative 2 is that it was used for oil production prior to being purchased by the city and it undoubtedly has contamination problems. After the debacle of the awesomely expensive cleanup of the site for the sports complex directly across Goldenwest, it is understandable that the city is reluctant to get into that kind of mess again.

The unfortunate reality is that the people of Huntington Beach no longer have the seemingly limitless open space that we once had. As the city gets denser and denser, we lose a certain freedom of choice. We are forced to compromise in making choices like the one before us now.

Lou is certainly correct that it would be a loss to us all if the new senior center were built on the site known as Alternative 1. But we will lose something no matter where the new center is constructed.

I propose that the City Council authorize the Community Services Department to hire qualified geotechnical experts to do a preliminary investigation of the Ellis-Goldenwest site.

A soil investigation of that site is something the city will probably have to do at some point in the future anyway, so we might as well bite the bullet now.

If that site appears to be badly contaminated ? to the point of making it fiscally impossible to build a senior center there ? then I will support the proposal to build the new center at Talbert and Goldenwest. I don’t see any real choice.