Boys’ Club Vandalism a Showcase of Rage

The interior windows are broken, the trophy case destroyed and the library books are among the debris sprawled ankle-deep across the floor.

Vandals have ripped open holes in the ceiling tile and scrawled angry graffiti across the walls. Pool tables have been overturned and the Coke machine has been trashed.

This is how the San Ysidro Boys’ Club looks on the inside, and everyone agrees that it is a shame.

But some now say the damage reflects the rage that the community feels because city and civic officials haven’t acted fast enough to reopen the club and get programs in gear for the young people in one of San Diego’s poorest areas, where there are few organized recreational programs.

“Everyone fiddled while the club burned,” said William J. Bauer, the attorney representing the San Ysidro club.

Mayor Tours Facility

The plight of the building--and the rage it symbolizes--was publicized on Wednesday when Mayor Maureen O’Connor, at Bauer’s invitation, toured the facility with television cameras in tow.

O’Connor was so shocked by what she saw that Thursday she called up City Manager John Lockwood and asked him to look into purchasing the property, which would cost $100,000, said mayoral press secretary Paul Downey.

The San Diego City Council could approve the purchase as early as Tuesday, when O’Connor wants to put it on the council’s docket as an emergency item, Downey said. The city has $330,000 in federal block grant money already earmarked for the club, which could be used to purchase and renovate the building.

The club, which opened 14 years ago, had long been a center of community activity in the border area, said Paul Clark, executive director of the San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce.

At its peak, the club had programs for 1,000 boys, and its building was the place that community and civic groups, like the Rotarians, met each week.

Withdrew Annual Payment

But all that shut down in October after the local United Way cut off its funding to the club. United Way officials said they withdrew the $57,000 annual payment to the San Ysidro club because attendance in its youth programs had been waning.

Bauer said the closure left the San Ysidro club with thousands of dollars in overdue bills, financial woes that were compounded when two former employees--its director and a secretary--filed suit in May to collect $44,700 in pensions. In all, the club’s outstanding debts now total nearly $90,000, Bauer said.

The San Ysidro Boys’ Club board dwindled from 12 to four members, and its primary task became deciding what to do with their only asset--the building, which Bauer said is valued at $500,000 to $600,000.

Late last year, the San Ysidro group was approached by their counterparts from the Boys’ Clubs of San Diego, a separate organization. The San Diego organization offered to take over the building by raising $1.25 million to retire the debt and start up and run the youth programs for five years, said John Treiber, executive director of the San Diego Boys’ Clubs.

Part of the deal would require the San Ysidro group to simply deed the property over to the San Diego Boys’ Clubs, which runs four other facilities, Treiber said.

Strained Feelings

The offer was rejected, however, and there have been strained feelings between the two groups ever since.

“I think there is a very strong feeling that they don’t want to have anything to do with another Boys’ Clubs operation or any merger,” Treiber said. “It’s a turfdom kind of thing.”

But Al Vitela, board president for the San Ysidro club, said he and his colleagues considered the San Diego offer unacceptable because there was no guarantee the $90,000 in debts would be paid. Instead, they decided to find another buyer for the property, and they approached the City of San Diego.

Bauer said the city’s Parks and Recreation Department showed some interest in buying the property, but backed down when it learned about the standing offer from the San Diego group.

Meanwhile, the building was taking a beating from vandals.

‘People Were Striking Out’

For months, Bauer said, the vandals broke through doors and climbed in through the roof to tear the place apart.

“If you analyze it psychologically, you can see a lot of things,” said Bauer. “People were striking out, acting out.”

Bauer said some of the graffiti had anti-establishment overtones and appeared to express a rage against the circumstances that closed the center in the first place.

“Some people found out that the downtown guys were in effect closing their club,” Bauer said. “They were saying, ‘If we can’t have it, you’re not going to have it except as a piece of junk.’ . . . The people have gone in there and busted up their own toys, their own facility.”

Vandals had even gone so far as to “put out the eyes” of two 20-foot football players painted on the gymnasium wall, Bauer said.

The Last Straw

The last straw, he said, came Tuesday night when someone set a fire in the building. The next day Bauer called up O’Connor and asked her to drop by and tour the facility.

“It’s really sad that the facility, which is one of the nicest facilities in Southern California, is basically destroyed, except for the shell of the building and the land,” Bauer said.

Now, it will take an extra $150,000 to fix the structure.

“The sad part here is we had a bunch of adults who didn’t get the job accomplished. I mean the San Diego Boys’ Club, city park staff.

“The point is you had a lot of adults meddling with it and the kids suffer,” he said. “It’s a failure of the adult community.”