Editorial: San Geronimo Valley’s new pavilion is a true community asset

For 55 years, the San Geronimo Valley Community Center has been a busy local hub of activity, ranging from cultural and educational programs to health services.

The center continues to grow.

Its addition of an outdoor performance pavilion is one of its new offerings, one that adds a new open-air venue for the western half of our county.

Dave Cort, the center’s longtime executive director who retired this year, but still serves as a part-time consultant, says transforming the courtyard has been “a dream” for more than three decades.

A June 30 show, “Family Music Hour,” featuring homegrown talent, drew 300 people to the fundraiser.

A crowd of 300 people is a strong turnout for any Marin venue.

Center leaders raised $300,000 to make it happen.

The pavilion will also be put to good use by students at Lagunitas School, which owns the center and leases it to the community. It will be a venue for the students’ concerts, plays and gatherings, such as graduation.

It is a wonderful transformation of a gopher-pocked lawn into a venue for concerts and community get-togethers.

“It will just be a great community space,” the center’s executive director, Alexa Davidson, told the IJ.

It is all part of the function the center has played in the lives of residents of the valley’s small towns – Woodacre, Lagunitas, San Geronimo, Forest Knolls and Nicasio.

It’s a chain of sleepy, small towns – with around 4,000 residents.

But it has a center that offers a varied breadth of programs that equals larger communities.

For example, the center provides after-school programs for Lagunitas School pupils, lunches for seniors and hosts a food pantry that serves more than 700 people every week.

Also, on its website – sgvcc.org – the center  and the Two Valley Elders Advisory Council are currently conducting an online needs survey for residents 50 and older to help shape local programs and projects to meet their needs.

The center’s gym, built in 2009, is used by the school as well as local recreational programs.

The center also offers youth job training referrals, connecting local middle and high school students to part-time jobs – and potential careers.

Its $2 million annual budget and staffing reflects a huge change from when Cort was hired in 1991 as the center’s lone employee to manage its $30,000 yearly budget.

The center has grown a lot since, always striving to meet the breadth of needs in the community. Among its goals has been responding to equity gaps.

The new pavilion is the latest example of that growth, the center expanding its role as a safe, vibrant and community-centered place filled with resources and activities.

Continued community support has made that growth possible and that strength has played a key role in attracting grants.

Congratulations to the center’s leadership and the community for the new addition to the many benefits that support engenders.