Ready by Five won't take over community center

by Chris Bristol
Yakima Herald-Republic

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YAKIMA -- Surplus property? Don't ever say that about the Southeast Yakima Community Center again.

Bowing to public pressure Tuesday, officials representing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation dramatically withdrew the Southeast Center as the proposed site for the new Ready by Five early learning center.

Dramatic because the decision was announced only after 90 minutes of testimony before the Yakima City Council that got rowdy at times as speaker after speaker defended the Southeast Center.

Many more speakers were lined up, but after a break Rick Linneweh, president of the Ready by Five board, said he had heard enough.

"We won't be born in conflict. We don't want this to be a fight," he said, his voice drowned out by cheers and clapping when he announced, "Please, let us look for other alternatives."

With that, Mayor Dave Edler closed the public hearing at the Convention Center, but not before admonishing many of the 150 in attendance to support the financially struggling Southeast Center with more than fiery rhetoric. The council owns the Southeast Center, and was being asked to declare it surplus property so that it could be condemned to make way for a new Ready by Five facility.

"My challenge to you, if you truly believe what you say about the Southeast Community Center being the jewel of Yakima ... then you better roll up your sleeves!" he shouted over the cheering.

Ready by Five is Yakima's version of Thrive by Five, an ambitious early learning pilot project funded by the Gates Foundation that is one of only two in the state. The other is in White Center, an impoverished and ethnically diverse neighborhood in an unincorporated area south of Seattle.

Needing a facility and at least four acres for a parking lot and open space, and with Gates Foundation money ready to bankroll construction, civic leaders earlier this year latched onto the Southeast Center property as a less than perfect solution.

But the 37-year-old center historically has been the center of Yakima's now-dwindling black population, and its supporters made it clear Tuesday night they couldn't stand the thought of seeing it torn down.

"I am pleading with you, council, reconsider what you are about to do!" thundered Pastor Rosetta Horne, one of several speakers who defended the center's mission.

Some speakers were in favor of the proposed Ready by Five center, however, including several Latinos who questioned the center's dwindling services and its role in a neighborhood that is now largely Hispanic.

"The community has changed," said Luz Gutierrez, a member of the local Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "It's not like it was when the Southeast Center was built" in the early 1970s.

After the hearing, Linneweh and colleague Helen Marieskind said the decision to forgo the Southeast Center was the right thing to do.

Nevertheless, they now must find another site -- not an easy task, given the various factors at play, including the need for buildable land on the eastern side of town.

"We will build somewhere," promised Marieskind.