Orange : Y gives Bank Building to The Friendly Center
The YMCA, which faced a neighborhood protest over use of a donated portable building as a day-care center, has given the $300,000 building to a Latino community center.
“It had a happy ending, just not the happy ending we expected,” Dan C. Wooldridge, YMCA board president, said Friday.
The temporary building, which had been the Sun West Bank at Glassell Street and Palmyra Avenue for a decade, was given to the YMCA by developer Dick Broadway in July to make room for a senior citizens center, Wooldridge said.
The Y immediately began raising $100,000 to move the building to its land near Chapman Avenue and the Costa Mesa Freeway and to renovate it. But neighbors complained that the land was not designated for purposes other than single-family homes, so the YMCA donated the building to The Friendly Center at Lemon and Cypress streets.
The center used $24,000 from city block grants to move the 5,400-square-foot building and will pay another $56,000 to renovate it for use as a preschool, expected to open this winter, and community center, said executive director Mary Garcia.
The center will also be used for emergency food distribution and for helping Latinos with amnesty applications and translations.
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