When Santa Clara planned to build a new library in Central Park, city officials worried the Santa Clara Lawn Bowlers clubhouse would be an eyesore. So, the city demolished it. City officials told the club the city would build a new clubhouse. In the meantime, the lawn bowlers could use an old construction trailer. It wasn’t ideal, but it would be short-term.
That was 22 years ago.
For years, the Santa Clara City Council had bandied about the idea of finally earmarking money to get the group a new clubhouse like it promised. Then the pandemic hit, draining city coffers.
But about a year ago, the council finally set aside $750,000 to pay for a new clubhouse. However, despite the council green lighting the construction, the effort has sputtered.
Dave Mooso, vice president of the Santa Clara Lawn Bowlers, said he doesn’t want to “poke the bear” and make city officials think the group is ungrateful for the consideration. Still, he said, the group has been patient for a long time, and the situation is frustrating.
“The [city officials] I’ve spoken to say this has taken too long,” he said. “They told us there are a lot of things going on … I don’t want to jump the gun, but after the new year, that kind of excuse is not going to fly very well.”
Discussions among the council, led by city employees, have centered around where to put the new clubhouse. A proposed redesign of the park spurred that consideration, and unsurprisingly, delayed construction. City employees have regularly pointed to understaffing. Then there was the election. Now, the holidays.
And, as construction costs soar, every delay has caused the cost to balloon.
“If you look at all the other lawn bowling clubs throughout the area, the ones that have clubhouses tend to have more members,” Mooso said.
Roseann Zimbauer, the group’s event director, said that when the lawn bowlers had a clubhouse, it had more than 100 members. Since then, the group has dwindled to 32 members. Part of “the beauty” of the clubhouse’s old location, she said, is that it already has hookups for water, sewer and electricity. The construction trailer the group uses is “beyond salvaging,” she added.
The council has frequently bemoaned the city’s dwindling options for recreation activities. The council’s response to the loss of the city’s BMX track’s sanction and the closure of the George Haines International Swim Center illustrate this attitude. That doesn’t even include Mayor Lisa Gillmor’s constant harping on youth soccer parks or the loss of the city’s golf course.
The lack of a clubhouse has hamstrung the lawn bowlers, most of whom are seniors. Zimbauer said the club gives seniors something to do, something the city has repeatedly proclaimed it values.
“It is just a real pleasure for us, and it is a social thing. It keeps us mentally and physically healthy,” she said.
One council member said the situation illustrates a pathology among city employees, one that demonstrates that the city isn’t properly prioritizing projects.
Once the council allocated the money, Council Member Kevin Park said, it assumed construction was underway.
“This is Santa Clara working the way it has been working for years,” Park said. “The fact that nobody knows what is going on is really bad. We have been accepting city excuses for years.”
Putting projects on the backburner compounds the problem, he said. Continuing to kick the can down the road will only make matters more emergent. If something is important to land on a council agenda, it should be important enough for the council to get status updates, he added.
Everybody wants to take credit for fixing things, Park said, but nobody wants to admit that the city’s aging infrastructure is that way because the city has allowed it to happen.
“It is unacceptable that we work on our time when we have people who depend on us,” he said. “Approving a project doesn’t mean a darn thing if it isn’t funded, and it being funded doesn’t mean a darn thing if it isn’t moving forward … We are not just doing stuff for ourselves … Our job is not just to keep everything maintained. It is to inform people who are waiting on our actions.”