WCC

     Until the Fall of 2010, the site for the Weed Community Center (WCC) was in a tradeoff between two potential sites.  The original Bel Air Park location had been dropped, some time ago, since the available funding would in no way be sufficient for construction of a new building on the Park site.
     One proposed site being considered by the WCC Board was the 'Great Northern' building near the Weed Elementary school which is inadequate in size to house all of the intended Weed Community Center usages. This option is still being put forth as a possible location for the Community Center even though it has repeatedly been shown to be totally inadequate to provide the operating space necessary to meet the Community's present needs (not to mention expanded needs in the future).
     The other potential site (which received only minimal consideration by the WCC Board) was the Weed Mercantile Mall Building which is presently housing the Weed Community Resource Center (WCRC) activities (which are described here) in addition to functioning as a multi-unit mall. The Mercantile is centrally located in Weed, and has adequate space for all of the planned Weed Community Center projects on the first floor.  Minor modifications such as removing existing non-load-bearing partitions to provide a large unobstructed meeting/dining area could have been achieved at a reasonably low cost.
     A significant advantage of the Mercantile solution was the availability of two additional floors, which would be in reserve for future cost-effective expansion of space to allow for substantially expanded Weed Community Center and Weed Community Resource Center activities over a period of years. This augmentation could have proceeded in an orderly planned fashion as community needs expanded and as funding became available over several years in the future. The third floor would have become the 10,000 sq. ft. Weed Teen Center.
     However, the WCC board decided to not utilize the Mercantile, to not make any firm recommendation on location, lost their challenge grants from the Ford Family and McConnell Foundations, effectively dissolved as a functioning WCC board, and turned their responsibility over to the Weed Recreation and Parks District.  In April 2011 WRC/WCRC offered to work together with the Weed Recreation and Parks District (WR&PD) to create a jointly-sponsored plan and grant proposal to provide a Weed Community Center that would best satisfy the Community's needs. This offer of cooperation was rejected, and the WR&PD locked-in on the impractical Great Northern building solution.  The WRC/WCRC team then decided to take vigorous unilateral action to assure that the citizens of Weed could acquire a Community Center that actually fulfilled their needs.
     At this point in time, the Weed Revitalization Coalition (WRC) in collaboration with WCRC initiated an energetic community-wide effort to develop and come together around one coordinated Weed Community Center project in the Weed Mercantile Mall location. WRC/WCRC jointly prepared and submitted a new grant application to the Ford Foundation to restore the previous grant funding, and to revive  the WCC project as the permanent Community Center home for the WCRC's Community-wide activities in the centrally-located Weed Mercantile Mall.
     Unfortunately, the WR&PD then submitted a competing grant application to the grantors which utilized the totally inadequate "Great Northern" building on schoolhouse hill as the venue for the Community Center.  They have thus persisted in their vain attempts to use this building.  As a result, the grantor's have denied both requests, preferring to see a unified community choice for the location.  As a further result of the WR&PD's actions, the entire Weed Community Center project is now on permanent hold until WR&PD withdraws its proposal for use of the unrealistic location within the Great Northern building. The WRC/WCRC partnership is  still willing to pursue the previously offered joint effort between ourselves and the WR&PD that supports the Mercantile as the one and only obvious choice to house the Weed Community Center.

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