A West Valley town doesn’t have a central community hub. One local group is trying to fix that.
The Los Gatos Thrives Foundation, a nonprofit focused on helping older adults, recently unveiled conceptual designs of a potential new community center. The designs signal the start of plans to build a multigenerational community center in a town that’s been without one for years.
It’s something Los Gatos residents overwhelmingly want, especially because the town’s two small recreation centers for youths and adults have limited capacity for events. Approximately 76% of residents said the town needs a new community center, according to data from a Los Gatos Thrives Foundation survey of more than 1,800 people. They want a range of amenities too, including outdoor patio seating, a large community room, a performance space, small meeting and event rooms, fitness class rooms, a teen center room, a full-service kitchen and outdoor sports courts.
The nonprofit aims to find a site for the center by the year’s end, but it’s too early to know how much it will cost, how it’ll be funded or when it could be completed.
Ryan Rosenberg, chair of the nonprofit’s community center campaign, called the community center a longstanding need in Los Gatos. He said the town doesn’t have many meeting spaces and has to limit its recreational activities because of its small facilities. He’s leading the campaign to create a community hub for young people like his two sons.
“I want to do this for them, and it’s for the next generation beyond that,” Rosenberg told San José Spotlight.
Los Gatos once had a community center, which opened around 1966 at 123 E. Main St. before the site was transformed into the youth recreation center there now.
Town officials proposed a new 32,000-square-foot community center in the 2007 Civic Center Master Plan, alongside library renovations. Los Gatos completed the library in 2012, but the community center never got off the ground because funding ran dry.
Mayor Matthew Hudes, speaking on behalf of himself and not the Town Council, said that history has left a gap in Los Gatos’ services.
“At one point, Los Gatos was a leader in doing things when we were smaller, but we’ve kind of lost that at this point,” Hudes told San José Spotlight. “We just haven’t kept up.”
Other surrounding West Valley municipalities have modern community centers for their residents.
Cupertino’s Quinlan Community Center opened in the 1990s and gets approximately 1,500 weekly visitors, according to city officials. The capacity of its largest room is 280 people, where it often hosts its state of the city event. In Campbell, the community center provides free and affordable lunches for older adults and teaches people to swim in its pool. It has a track and field, tennis courts and other recreational services.
Tanner Goulden, president of Los Gatos High School’s community center club, said a new facility could serve as a “third place” for students outside of home and school. He said it could create an equitable space for teens to hang out because of its free resources.
“When you look at young people and old people and anybody in between, I think that the opportunity for social connections in a community center is just really amazing and really exciting,” Goulden told San José Spotlight.
Rosenberg said Los Gatos is ready for a community center.
“The town has recognized for a long time that it needs this. It just hasn’t been able to make it happen,” he said. “Now’s the time.”
Contact Annalise Freimarck at [email protected] or follow @annalise_ellen on X.
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