Child-Care Center to Get a Place to Call Its Own

Basketball players are itching to use the gym at Victory-Vineland Recreation Center, but the day-care kids have first dibs.

The restrooms are off limits too, for security reasons, because they also are used by the children.

Students in karate, ballet and other classes are also clamoring for space. And then there are Wednesdays, when more than 200 senior citizens take over the North Hollywood gym for a full day of bingo, and the day-care program is shunted into a tiny side room.

“We really need our own place,” said Darlene Johnson, the child-care director. “It’s very hard to have child care and karate going on at the same time. We only have that one big room, and even if we cordon the children off, there just isn’t enough space.”

On Friday, the Los Angeles City Council helped the facility’s cause by voting to shift funds to the North Hollywood facility.

Proposition K had been designed to solve such parks and recreation dilemmas. Los Angeles voters narrowly approved the $750-million parks measure in 1996, prompting a flood of funding proposals.

About $2.1 million has been earmarked to build a new Victory-Vineland child-care center.

But Johnson was still holding her breath this week as Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs, a candidate for mayor, attempted to smooth out a few bureaucratic kinks standing between the center’s clients and a new 7,500-square-foot building. Before the city could issue bonds to pay for the project, it needed to scrape together about $178,000 to cover future interest payments.

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In unanimously approving a proposal by Wachs, the council shifted some unused recreation funds Friday to the North Hollywood site, as well as to Rancho Cienega Child Care Center in Crenshaw, and Yucca Park, a new park in Hollywood.

“There is a huge need for this,” Wachs said. “It’s exactly what the funds are intended for.”

Overcrowding isn’t the only problem with the recreation center, located next door to a bustling discount department store in the 11100 block of Victory Boulevard. Safety also is a paramount concern among parents stunned by a string of brutal crimes against children.

A year ago, a 12-year-old girl was raped in the restroom of a North Hollywood park. A few months later, a man deliberately plowed his car into a Costa Mesa playground, killing two children. Then came the Jewish Community Center shootings last summer in Granada Hills. Buford O. Furrow Jr., an avowed white supremacist, allegedly opened fire inside the summer camp, wounding three children and a teenager, among others.

“Every night, the evening news tells of another tragedy involving children in our neighborhood,” a Sun Valley couple wrote Wachs last year, urging his support for a day-care center that would be detached from the main gym and its visitors. “The Victory-Vineland Recreation Center is in need of a separate, secure building.”

Activities at the day-care program range from piano lessons to puppet shows, kite-making and Hawaiian dance, Johnson said. The facility accepts children ages 5 to 13, and there is often a waiting list in the summer.

For all its limited elbow room, the Victory-Vineland center offers low-cost child care in a working-class neighborhood where the average household income is about $36,000, said Arlene DeSanctis, a Wachs deputy. The fees range from $35 per child for a 15-hour week to $70 for a 50-hour week, and there are discounts for additional children.

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The new building will accommodate 75 children, a 25% increase over the current enrollment.

“I don’t want to see any child ever be left home alone,” said Johnson, who regularly solicits donations to keep down costs. “I love these kids more than anything.”