OXNARD : Salvation Army Sells Community Center

The Oxnard/Port Hueneme Salvation Army is selling its 3,500-square-foot West Hill Street community center for about $200,000 to the Seventh-day Adventist Southern California Council of Churches.

“It’s one of the last few [financial] pieces we need to pull together a funding package for the new facility,” publicity chairwoman Maureen Hooper Lopez said.

The Salvation Army broke ground about two weeks ago on a $1.7-million building on Wooley Road in Oxnard that is about three times the size of its present community center, also in Oxnard, Hooper Lopez said.

The sale of the Hill Street site helps close a $500,000 shortfall in the cost of building and outfitting the new center, she said. Escrow is expected to close within 30 days. The Adventists will use the building for their Oxnard church, Hooper Lopez said. The two churches will share the Hill Street quarters until the Salvation Army moves in March.

“We were talking about [moving] when I first joined the board in 1967,” advisory board Chairman Bob Butz said. “It’s been a long time coming, but we’re finally there.”

The Salvation Army has occupied its Hill Street center since 1954. Last year the group served about 70,000 meals from a center about the size of an average single-family home, Butz said.

The group reactivated its capital fund-raising campaign last week with the goal of coming up with another $250,000 to pay for furniture and equipment for its new home.

The Wooley Road site will include space for a youth drop-in center and a kitchen that will serve senior citizens hot meals, rather than brown bag lunches.