Community Effort : City Pledges $8 Million to Help Build Delhi Center in Private-Public Venture

Providing everything from food distribution to AIDS care, the Delhi Community Center has helped Orange County residents for 25 years. Now, the city of Santa Ana tentatively has agreed to help the Delhi Community Center to the tune of $8 million.

The City Council recently approved the first chunk of money, about $400,000, for design plans for a new Delhi Center across the street from the existing center in an expanded Delhi Park.

The 31,000-square-foot building would include facilities ranging from boxing rings to kitchens, a stark contrast to the two Spartan, World War II-era Quonset huts the center now occupies.

It would become the city’s largest community center. Currently, the largest such center, in Jerome Park, is about 12,000 square feet, said Ron Ono, the design manager in the city’s Recreation and Community Services Agency.

The Delhi Center would also represent the first public-private partnership of its kind in the city, Ono said.

While city workers probably will manage the athletic programs at an expanded Delhi Park, the city will contract with the private, nonprofit Delhi to run the community center.

Ono described the partnership as “the perfect marriage.”

Yet, there is one catch: Money for expanding the park, building the center and funding the center programs is not fully secured.

Still, council members and city staffers attended a community meeting at Our Lady of Guadalupe Delhi Church last week and pledged to have the center open by Easter, 1997.

“Things are tight,” Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr. said. “But it’s a start.”

The city is expected to spend $3.5 million designing and building the center. Ono said another $3.5 million will go to expanding the park from 2.5 to 10 acres, using land occupied by the city’s former maintenance yard.

The empty yard parking lot is now dotted with piles of dirt and debris, and Ono estimated it will cost $1 million to clean it up. This week, the council voted to spend just over $23,000 to remove fuel tanks from the yard.

This year’s budget includes $1.4 million for the center. If future budgets cannot come up with money for the center or park, Ono said the city will seek grants and donations.

Yet, even if the center is built and the park is renovated, the Delhi Center must face another challenge: serving more people than ever, and finding the money to double, or even triple its current yearly budget of $450,000.

“I think it’s realistic, but it has to be done in a planned way,” said Irene Martinez Delhi’s executive director. “Maybe, it will be done in phases, and on Day One we won’t have all the programs.”

Martinez hopes to squeeze more money out of Delhi’s private-sector contributors and seek out new sources. Current funding includes money from city, state and federal grants.

One possible new source of funds will be profits from a proposed concession stand in the expanded park.

Delhi already receives revenue by charging for some of its programs, and Martinez said the revenue may rise once the new center opens.

The center will pay the city $1 in rent for 50 years after fulfilling one of two options. It can pay the city the value of its current plot of land in cash--$60,000 to $100,000, according to estimates--or the center can deed its current property over to the city.

Martinez said it is not even worth the effort to speculate on the value of the Quonset huts, which were a gift from the Marine Corps. She said they contain about 2,000 square feet in space.

When it rains, the thin wood paneling inside the huts warps. Air conditioning, heating and carpet were not installed until four years ago. About that time, Delhi joined forces with a grass-roots campaign begun in 1985 to renovate the park, and pushed for a new community center.

Even now, Martinez said, it is hard for many community members to believe that the new center and expanded park will become a reality. That’s why, Martinez noted, community members have asked officials to come back in three months for an update.