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NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021 • northcoastjournal.com
ON THE TABLE
The Jefferson Community Center is Turning Up the Heat By Katie Rodriguez
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onthetable@northcoastjournal.com
t’s a sunny Friday afternoon at the Jefferson Community Center in Eureka when the kids begin their afternoon harvesting. The garden beds bear a bountiful display of summer produce: kale, chard, snap peas, tomatoes and artichokes, all adorned in vibrant leaves. Raspberry and blackberry brambles crawl up the sides of the fence adjacent to the garden area and graze a fruit tree, the first of its kind here, just beginning to produce what will soon become Honey Crisp apples this fall. The garden, which hosts a group of kids every Friday at noon learning how to tend to the soil, didn’t used to look so lively. Before 2012, when the Westside Community Improvement Association bought the property (formerly the Westside Community Group), it was an abandoned elementary school covered in graffiti, surrounded by a chain link fence and a sea of gravel. Jefferson Elementary School had been sitting empty on the west side of Eureka for about five years when members of the community decided to take matters into their own hands. “Fight Neighborhood Blight!” were the words that began to appear on flyers and posters around the neighborhood, and soon community organizers began to piece together a vision of what the area could become, and how to best utilize a space poised to become the linchpin of the community. Purchasing the property did not come without a long and arduous process, in part spawned by political transitions that created stalemates for the growing number of vociferous community members dedicated to revitalizing the space (“The Council that Kicked the Hornets’ Nest,” Jan. 13, 2011). “We had an intentional, persistent presence of neighbors and we began to take ownership of the space, even though it wasn’t ours,” says Heidi Benzonelli, president of the board of WCIA. “But quite frankly, it was ours. It is the community commons. It was so when it was a school and it is so again as a community center.” Today, the Westside Community Improvement Association exists as a nonprofit devoted to facilitating programs to fulfill the underserved needs of the community. Committed to propelling this community-level change, the nonprofit has worked diligently to resurrect the property, build
a community park, run a family resource center, provide after-school services and offer classes and training courses. From the start, Benzonelli knew that providing food for the community was going to be one of their most important services. “The very first thing [we did with food] was my husband serving hot dogs off his tailgate when we showed up to do landscaping,” she says. “We just knew that if the neighbors and the kids were going to come, they were going to be hungry, so we just fed everybody who came and helped.” Getting the kitchen going after purchasing the property was no easy feat. Years of vacancy brought rust and mortar to the drains, there were outdated appliances and a laundry list of items to inspect and bring up to code. CalFresh, a program offered by the California Department of Social Services, was instrumental in making progress with the kitchen, providing the WCIA with a $44,000 grant that enabled them to kick off summer food programs and serve to the public. Wasting no time in putting the kitchen to use, just a few days after receiving their permits, Benzonelli and volunteers moved swiftly to provide a “burrito bar” for the 240 volunteers assisting with the community center playground build. That was in 2013. Since then, the food service offerings have evolved into a fullfledged, year-long rotating list of programs. “The kitchen is really the heartbeat of the community center,” shares Benzonelli, standing amid the kids getting plates of sauteed vegetables, rice, fresh watermelon slices and tangerines for lunch, all made from scratch. Throughout the year, the Jefferson Community Center provides anyone under the age of 18 with free lunches and often dinners as well, focusing on providing healthy, local foods. “We want to inspire people to think about when produce is in season and think, ‘When you look at the tomato on your sandwich and it’s out of season, where did that come from?’” The Jefferson Project also has a hand in food distribution services. Benzonelli manages several small teams that vend to Alder Grove Charter School and North Coast Children’s Services, deliver produce boxes to seniors and work in tandem with the North Coast Grower’s Association to
