Guadalupe’s Escalante Meadows Community Center and LeRoy Park will get long-awaited facelifts after receiving $4.2 million in federal funds—approved by the Biden administration on March 15, U.S. Rep Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) told the Sun.
After going through a rigorous application process, the Escalante Meadows Community Center will receive $2.5 million to create an early childhood education and wellness center, and the remaining $1.7 million will restore LeRoy Park’s community facility and complete other park updates, Carbajal said.
In total, $17 million was allocated Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, he said.
“These projects are spread out and distributed throughout the entire district, and I think they are going to go a long way to improve significant infrastructure institutions to enhance the quality of life of the residents of the Central Coast,” Carbajal said.
Guadalupe Mayor Ariston Julian said completing the LeRoy Park project will give residents a space to gather and could heighten a sense of community.
“When you finish work, you need to be able to enjoy your community in the sense of going to a park or going to [community] programs. There’s quite a few agencies that need a home where they can have events,” Julian said. “There’s a huge demand for bilingual education for kids, [and] citizenship classes for residents. This [the community center] provides that resource and gives Guadalupe [residents] pride in that.”
LeRoy Park was a Santa Barbara County-run park until 2004 when the county deeded it back to the city. However, limited funding caused the park to deteriorate, and the LeRoy Park community center became infested with mold, which caused the center to be temporarily shut down, he said.
The city began allocating general fund dollars to invest in the space and collaborated with community nonprofit Los Amigos de Guadalupe to look for other funding sources, Julian said. Slowly, the city began park restoration and the community center’s reconstruction, but the city needed more funds if it wanted to complete the entire design by adding a new outdoor auditorium and an all-purpose room, he added.
“We didn’t have enough money to finish what we really needed, and we received the help of [Los Amigos de Guadalupe] and the Guadalupe School District to apply for federal money,” Julian said.
Los Amigos de Guadalupe CEO Tom Brandenberry said the increased construction costs limited the city’s ability to complete LeRoy Park, and they turned to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s and U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal’s offices for help securing additional funding—which will now be allocated to Guadalupe through the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in the next few months.
“Los Amigos de Guadalupe will be working with the USDA on behalf of the city to get the finished product and the contract. … All of the planning and specifications and engineering work has been done. We are shovel ready. We just need to hire a construction company to do the work,” Brandenberry said.
The park will be open for the public this summer while construction continues, and Bradenberry said he expects the additions will be ready for people to use in 2023.
“Not a lot of people in the community necessarily have green space, they live in apartment buildings. Having a park in the neighborhood that allows people to get out of their apartments and play with their kids in a safe space is incredibly important,” Bradenberry said.
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2022.
