State-of-the-Art Fun

It almost seems crazy that, for years, youth recreation in one of the most crowded sections of Boyle Heights was limited to a worn pool table and a few other games in an abandoned warehouse.

At least now there’s the new Salesian Family Youth Center on 4th Street, an air-conditioned gymnasium that looks like it was designed by NASA. Inside, there is a basketball court, a computer lab and a state-of-the-art game room.

The center drew a couple of hundred adults, dignitaries and an army of neighborhood children Monday to its grand opening. “Last summer, all we did was play outside,” said Nicholas Iglesias, 9, as he lined up a corner shot on one of two new pool tables. “There was hardly anything good to do.”

Nobody who enters the $3.5-million building can make that claim anymore. There are arts and crafts, weightlifting, a full kitchen, a family resource center, job training and career planning.

The center was dreamed up by neighborhood activists five years ago. They started by purchasing an abandoned plumbing company warehouse and two dilapidated homes from the city.

Using the warehouse as a local youth hangout violated several city codes. It leaked in the winter and heated up like a sauna in the summer.

So members of nearby St. Mary’s Catholic Church teamed with the Salesian Boys and Girls Club of Los Angeles to raise funds for the new center.

Now, about 360 children can play there at a time, making it the largest youth center in Boyle Heights, a crowded area with six schools, five public housing developments and too many gangs.

Father William P. Schafer, executive director of the center, said it is more than a playground.

The center’s lab of 22 new Internet-ready computers is the anchor of Salesian efforts to prepare neighborhood children to compete with young people from more privileged neighborhoods, Schafer said.

“Everything we do here is always with a view to the general goal of becoming something in your life,” he said.

For example, the computer lab will feature classes in business software, writing resumes, and fun ways to learn math and reading. Basketball and other sports help develop leadership and team skills. Family counseling, child development courses and a large party area in the center will emphasize the importance of group unity, Schafer said.

Designed by Barrio Planners Inc. to resemble a NASA space building, the youth center was dedicated Monday to Hilda Santa Maria, a church activist who spearheaded the project in 1995. She died of leukemia a year later.

Cardinal Roger M. Mahony praised the center as the best way to deal with youth violence. “If we had more facilities like this, we wouldn’t be in such a struggle to build more prisons, youth detention facilities and all those other places,” he said.

Lincoln Villanueva, 10, had other thoughts as he played solitaire on one of the computers. He said he was happy to be in a cool place on a hot day.

“This place is good for us,” he said. He recalled how he and his friends used to sit outside the old warehouse.

Now, he said, “we don’t have be outside in the sun getting burned.”