After fire, Alum Rock organizers fight to save treasured San Jose community hub

SAN JOSE — What is left of the former Mexican American Community Services Agency facility in East San Jose will soon be demolished. While it had gone through its share of troubles over the past decade-plus, a devastating three-alarm fire last month reduced it to rubble.

Now, neighborhood organizers are demanding a say in the future of the beloved center, which was long a vibrant community hub for the city’s diverse Alum Rock and Mayfair neighborhoods.

“This building means community, it means identity, it means culture, it means changing lives,” said Victor Vasquez, co-executive director of SOMOS Mayfair, who watched and wept as the building burned. “It is weaved into the identity of Mayfair and San Jose. It is a cultural asset and part of our cultural (history). It is meant to be passed down.”

For months before the Aug. 29 fire, community organizers with SOMOS Mayfair, the Mexican Heritage Plaza and the Si Se Puede Collective had been lobbying the Alum Rock School District to partner with them to reopen and rehabilitate the abandoned youth center.

They had hoped to preserve the colorful indigenous Mexican and Meso-American murals and architecture, which adorned the building’s halls and told stories of Latino culture and history. They dreamed of reviving the long-lost traditions of neighborhood indoor-soccer rivalries and late-night youth hangouts, and welcoming new and returning community members through the site’s two front pillars.

While the neighborhood groups and school district agree MACSA must be demolished, some hope remains as organizers began hatching new plans for the district-owned property. The Alum Rock school board is expected to update the public about MACSA’s status at each of its coming board meetings, until they reach some sort of a resolution. Until then the site’s future hangs in limbo.

Organizers envision a one-stop center for children and families to have access to a gym, library, community garden, legal and housing services and more. The center could benefit the students and teachers at Renaissance Academy at Mathson, an adjacent school which reopened this year with 500 students; a teacher housing site is also planned near the former MACSA building.

“We know our families are hurting. We want to be able to provide services to meet their needs,” said Jessica Paz-Cedillos, executive director of the School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza. “There isn’t one physical space like that, and that’s why this would be so transformative for the district and for the Mayfair community.”

The district’s interim superintendent, Sandra Garcia, did not respond to a request for comment. Sergio Diaz Luna, a district spokesman, instead offered a statement, writing the district shares “the community’s sentiment of deep respect and esteem for the work done in the building when it existed as the MACSA Youth Center and extend our thoughts to all affected by this loss.”

Longtime residents can recall MACSA’s prime as a hub for youth services and gang violence prevention, before financial corruption scandals — including the IRS revoking the facility’s nonprofit status in 2012 over misuse of teacher pension funds — ultimately led to its abrupt closure over 10 years ago.

When the building opened to the community in 1995, Angel Rios Jr. said the programs helped save lives and steer troubled youth away from prison or the morgue. MACSA’s mission then, the former associate director of the Mexican American Community Association said, was to “connect you with your destiny.”

He described the former site as an “urban sanctuary” for the Alum Rock area, where children and families could visit, play and learn without fear of street violence spilling over to the center. In those days, Rios met regularly with gang members and leaders, some who had dropped out of school, to help them turn their lives around.

“They saw that we were doing this for them, and they respected that,” said Rios, who is now a deputy city manager with the city of San Jose. “I always thought we had a prison pipeline from the East Side to the jail system, and we needed to disrupt it.”

MACSA represented the idea that “every young person has the ability to succeed, irrespective of their rap sheet, irrespective of their report card,” Rios said.

Mario Gonzalez, known by many as “Coach Mario,” still gets regular calls from former students who cherish memories of playing soccer and attending the late-night programs aimed at keeping youth off of the streets. He first started coaching at MACSA in 1996 — and left in 2012 — and can still remember the sounds of children running and laughing, skateboarding and throwing balls around. Fondly, he recalled one of the most popular programs was the “King of the Gym” pickup soccer games, where kids would develop friendly rivalries between neighborhoods and compete for prizes and bragging rights.

For the future of the MACSA, he said he hopes the district is able to partner with organizers to provide “what we had going on, but a much better version.” The building’s closure over 10 years ago hurt youth living nearby the most, who he said now desperately need a place to help them grow.

‘It hurt the community. It was something that was very in demand,” he said. “If we can get our kids back from the Alum Rock community, it’s needed.”