The proposed Kroc center may need to be reevaluated if necessary funding doesn’t come through in time.
BY NICK DIAMANTIDES
Staff Writer
The economic downturn is making it difficult to raise the money necessary for the development of the Salvation Army’s proposed Long Beach Kroc Center. The project touted as a “world class center of opportunity, education, recreation and inspiration” is planned for the 19-acre Hamilton Bowl site located just north of Pacific Coast Highway and Walnut Avenue in Long Beach.
Upon her death in 2003, Joan Kroc, the widow of McDonald’s restaurants founder Ray Kroc, bequeathed $1.6 billion to the Salvation Army solely for the purpose of establishing Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Centers throughout the United States. The Long Beach area Salvation Army is hoping to get a portion of that endowment.
Once built, the local facility will include a performing arts center with a music conservatory that will offer musical education and training to children beginning at a very young age. The music department of CSULB will participate in the conservatory.
In addition, the culinary arts department of LBCC, which has a campus adjacent to the planned center, will help provide culinary training at the Kroc educational facility. The complex will also house a computer lab, a childcare center, a music studio, a videography lab, other classrooms and the center’s administrative offices.
The campus will also contain a 16,000-square-foot chapel/auditorium, a dance studio, a 25-meter warm-up pool, a recreation pool with a slide and fountains, an indoor warm-water therapy pool, a 50-meter pool, an 80,000-square-foot gymnasium, and a wide array of other recreational facilities.
“The critical nature of this project right now is the need for funds,” said Salvation Army Major Glen Madsen. “We have to raise $25 million locally. When we get those funds in, that triggers in the $76 million Kroc gift. The Salvation Army has another approximately $23 million in local assets that we are putting toward this project. That will bring it up to $124 million.”
Madsen noted that Signal Hill Petroleum has donated several million dollars to the project. “Other than that we don’t have any significant large gifts, but we need to get those in the next few months,” he said. “In fact, our timeline is May.”
Madsen added that the Salvation Army and Long Beach officials have been talking and working together to make the local Kroc Center a reality for about four years. “It took us until December 2007 to actually sign the deal for the land,” he said. “We were not able to start the fundraising in earnest until we had a land mass for the project.”
Madsen explained that the development plans call for the funding to be secured by May of this year. “We are in the EIR (environmental impact report) process and it’s going into a different stage right now,” he said. “If all goes well and we have the money, we can start pushing dirt around to begin to prepare the building pads and the hydrology in May.”
Madsen stressed that if the funding is not secured by then, the Salvation Army will have to reevaluate the project and make some decisions as to how to move forward. “This is a real critical time in the process, and we want to do everything we can to make this happen as outlined,” he said. “It’s going to be a whole lot of hard work.”
Madsen noted that he was hoping some key players in the community would step forward to help fund the Kroc Center in the next few months.
“The Kroc Center will give an economic boost to the Long Beach area, it will help individuals and families to better themselves, and it will help beautify the whole area surrounding the project,” said Ivy Yang Leeson, the Salvation Army’s local capital campaign director. “It will also provide opportunities for students of LBCC and CSULB to participate in the partnerships being developed with the two colleges.”
Madsen explained that he was pleased that people in the area are volunteering their time to help raise the funds for the project. “We have local residents as well as city officials who have stepped forward to help us raise the funds,” he said. “I think it’s because everyone realizes that the KROC center will help people, will help local businesses, and will make this region a better place in which to live, work and play.”
Hamilton Bowl has been used as a collection site for storm water for many decades. “There will always be that function for that site,” Madsen said. “In the arrangement that the Salvation Army has with Los Angeles County and the cities of Long Beach and Signal Hill, we are putting in about $6 million in infrastructure that will transport the water underground to the pump site which then moves the water further down the system and eventually into the bay. He said the possibility of the site flooding was extremely unlikely.
“The downturn in the economy has been pretty severe for us,” Madsen said. “We have a lot of requests to huge entities, and we are concentrating on million-dollar-plus gifts. With the stock market crash and the economy, people have to look at their own assets.”
He explained that it was not necessary to have the $25 million in the bank by May, but if the Salvation Army could secure pledges by then, the project would move forward as planned.
