Cities Inject a Little Personality Into Community Centers

Community centers are often the most public of a city’s public buildings.

They house the pools where toddlers learn to swim, the gyms where teens gather after school to shoot hoops and where senior citizens cut a rug at dances, the classrooms where adults meet for night classes.

In recognition of that, many cities across Orange County have built their neighborhood centers with touches reflecting the soul of the community. They are trying to move away from simply erecting bland, utilitarian slabs of concrete.

“The new trend is to fit municipal buildings--particularly recreational facilities--into the environment and architectural designs of the local area,” said Ron Hagan, Huntington Beach’s director of community services.

In Brea, for example, city officials sought public comment at several community meetings as they planned a $10-million center. It opened 10 months ago with a nascent orange grove in front, a nod to the area’s citrus-growing history, and with exterior light fixtures shaped like oil derricks, reflecting another major economic influence. The soundproof panels inside the basketball court are designed to look like the hills surrounding Brea.

“We have a lot of little touches that make it less industrial, less governmental than some centers,” said Ret Wixted, the city’s community services director. “There’s a connection with the past.”

Those efforts contributed to widespread community enthusiasm about the new center.

“When it was ready, everybody was pretty excited about it,” resident Gail Sheppard said as she waited at the facility last week with her husband, Dan, as their 5-year-old daughter, Jessica, frolicked with playmates after a class.

“Practically the whole city came out when it opened. The people who live here are very proud of this,” she said.

Nikki MacNish, 14, said she often plays basketball and other games with friends at the Brea center.

“It’s a good environment for kids any age to come to. It’s safe,” she said as she bandaged a blister one afternoon last week.

She and her friends prefer it to the Boys and Girls Club, which they used to attend, because “it’s more interesting. There are more people our age,” she said.

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San Juan Capistrano will also look to its history when it builds its center this fall on land that was once the first walnut orchard in Orange County.

The city bought the 60-acre farm of local pioneer Joel Congdon and will build a $5.6-million center there with architectural touches designed to mesh with the city’s historic buildings, said Sharon Heider, the city’s open-space project manager. Community meetings revealed that was what residents wanted.

“Since the money is coming directly from the community, there’s obviously a need to be responsive to the community,” Heider said.

Anaheim’s older Brookhurst Community Center was built decades ago in the more customary style. But the city’s new center, with its groundbreaking planned for June 3, will mirror the Craftsman-style buildings downtown, said Richard Bruckner, the city’s redevelopment manager.

The city spent time on the design, he said, “to make sure it had an inviting feel, a place where everyone in town could call home and feel comfortable.”

Not all cities need to build anew to have centers that capture the spirit of the community. Huntington Beach decided to refurbish its community center, built in 1932 by laborers from the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration.

“We thought it was important to maintain the uniqueness of the building,” Hagan said. Though fixing the old building will cost about the same as building a new one, Hagan said, comments he has heard run 100 to 1 in favor of keeping the old gym.

“It will still look like an old-fashioned, institutional-type building. But I think there’s something to be said for that era,” Hagan said.

“I think people will find the historical aspect of it very exciting to see,” he said, with the restoration of old-style water fountains, archways, transoms over doorways and louvers in the roof. “We’ll give it its historical grandeur, if you will.”

Any community center, whether new or old, gives each city an opportunity to trigger cultural awareness in its residents, said Dan Heinfeld, president of LPA Inc., the Irvine architectural firm that designed the Brea, Anaheim and San Juan Capistrano centers.

“It is a very, very public facility. That’s one of the reasons we feel it ought to reflect the community, and their values and cultures,” he said. “I think everybody has some pride in where they live.”

While some people might dismiss Orange County as a homogeneous suburban sprawl, he said, there “really is a pretty rich and diverse history in the county, if you care to look for it.”