A Glimpse of Our Future: Alhambra’s New Community Center

By Mayor Jeff Maloney

Do you remember the old Shorb medical clinic? It’s the old brick building at the corner of Shorb Street and 6th Street that served as a county health clinic for many years. Many Alhambra residents still have fond memories of visiting for basic medical care, eye exams, and routine vaccinations.

The clinic shut down, and the old building sat vacant and unused for many years until just recently when the City approached Los Angeles County officials to ask to return the property to the City. Our county supervisor at the time, Kathryn Barger, supported our request, and we were thrilled when the County conveyed the property to Alhambra in 2019.

The City Council at that time proposed building a new community center at the site, so City staff quickly retained a consultant to do a deep dive to determine whether or not our plan was feasible and to provide a rough cost estimate.

Fortunately, the consultants determined that it was possible to accomplish all of the Council's goals:

• 25,000 feet of indoor activity space

• A multipurpose room for large gatherings and events

• State-of-the-art infrastructure

• Outdoor courtyard and grounds landscaped with California native plants

• Adaptive reuse of the original medical building

• Retention of the brick and mortar character

The downside was that the estimated cost was an amount of money that would be difficult for the City to raise on its own. Fortunately, this last year we saw a record setting state budget surplus, so our staff, led by City Manager Jessica Binnquist, put in formal requests with both of our state legislators to fund this project and they delivered. Big time. Our two state legislators, Senator Susan Rubio and Assemblymember Mike Fong, championed our proposed community center and fought to fund it in the state budget. I am thrilled to announce that through their hard work, we have secured a total of $25 million, which will cover most of, if not all, of the design, planning, and construction of our brand new community center! We are extremely grateful to both our state legislators for their hard work on our behalf.

This is truly a once in a generation opportunity for Alhambra, and I am committed to ensuring that we do this well and build a project that will be the pride of our City. The conceptual plans we have are only rough sketches, and there is still much work to do. We need your feedback on these initial plans and ideas. What do you want to see? What types of activities should we focus on? How can this center serve the needs of our community? If you have thoughts, please keep an eye out for how to be involved, and, as always, feel free to reach out to share your thoughts with me directly: jmaloney4alhambra@gmail.com.

Thank you again to our legislators for fighting for us, and thanks to my colleagues for seeing this through!

Have a wonderful rest of the summer!