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The roughly 56-block neighborhood that surrounds San Francisco’s Turk Street Corps is home to more than 3,500 children, the majority of whose families live below the poverty line. With 44 nationalities represented in this community and 33 different languages spoken on the streets, it is a melting pot of cultures. Unfortunately, it also has the highest rate of drugs and prostitution in the city.
“There are few places kids in the neighborhood can go to and be safe,” said Major Joe Posillico. To address that problem—and provide a safe haven where youth and others can grow and develop their potential—the Golden State Division has proposed the development of a Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center here.
According to Posillico, the innovative eight-story center would include the only full-court gymnasium and swimming pool in the neighborhood. In addition, it would have a dance studio (the San Francisco ballet has already agreed to provide support and teaching), a graphic arts studio, library/computer lab, fitness center/weight room, outdoor courtyard, climbing wall, tutoring and mentoring classrooms, a chapel, senior nutrition site and other basic social services.
It also has a housing component, which makes it different from all the other proposed Kroc facilities. “It’s actually two facilities in one,” Posillico explained, “so the housing facility would not be part of the Kroc Center, but it would still be on the same property.”
The community center would take up the first and second floors. The third floor would include shared community space and some of the 27 tranisitional housing units for “aged out” foster care youth, addressing the growing problem of young adults, age 18-22, who no longer qualify for the foster care system and have no place else to go. The housing units would continue on the fourth floor.
In addition, there would be 43 units of transitional housing for single adults coming out of the Army’s Harbor Light, Adult Rehabilitation Centers and similar community programs in San Francisco.
Planned, as well, are 40 units of permanent housing for single adults in recovery from substance abuse.
The total cost for the project would be approximately $51 million dollars.
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