City Council: South Pasadena Needs a New Community Center

South Pasadena needs a new community center. The city’s Senior Center is bursting at the seams and the South Pas Library needs to expand into the center to handle the crush of library patrons.

That was the gist of the message communicated by the South Pas City Council to Los Angles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich during a Public Financing Authority meeting on Wednesday.

“We’re getting 100 to 150 seniors at our lunches,” Councilmember Bob Joe told the special meeting at the Arroyo Seco Golf Course. “Our senior program is quite well known and well used—and we see an expansion both in our public library, our senior program.”

Referring to the plan to create a new community center, Joe said that he and Councilmember Michael Cacciotti are on a city ad-hoc committee “to try and make this happen.”

The comment prompted Antonovich to jokingly ask: “Do you bicycle to the [ad-hoc committee] meetings?” (Mayor Richard Schneider came to the meeting dressed in full biking gear—see attached photo.) Joe quipped that he does not, evoking much laughter in the room—and then some more when he added: “I will jog to the meetings.”

Mayor Pro Tem and Public Financing Authority Chair Marina Khubesrian said that she and City Manager Sergio Gonzalez attended the League of California Cities conference in Sacramento this past weekend, where they saw “some fabulous designs of community centers.” She developed “community center envy” at the conference, Khubesrian added, prompting Antonovich and others to laugh.

As South Pasadena’s demographics change and the population of seniors increases, “there seems to be [demand for] a place where people like to retire and stay.”