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After nearly a decade of planning and pandemic-related construction delays, Redwood City leaders cut the ribbon outside the refurbished Veterans Memorial Building and Senior Center on Monday, alongside local veterans and former 49ers players who got their start at the facility.
“It feels like the whole town is here,” Redwood City Mayor Elmer Martínez Saballos said before a crowd of hundreds at the event, including Redwood City Council members, San Mateo County supervisors and swaths of community members. “This facility reflects Redwood City’s commitment to building a community for all ages.”
The new $56 million facility at 1333 Madison Ave. is meant to expand recreation, wellness programs, senior services, community events and veteran recognition in Redwood City. The ADA-accessible 45,000-square-foot facility is slated to open in phases, with the Senior Lunch Program beginning on May 5 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays. Full programming throughout the building will begin on June 8.
The building features a 279-seat auditorium, multipurpose rooms, wellness and fitness areas, a revamped commercial kitchen for the city’s senior lunch program, a gym with half of a basketball court and indoor pickleball and volleyball arenas, as well as an auxiliary community space. Free and low-cost programs currently offered for seniors are expected to remain so.
Artistically, the building also features multimedia exhibits commemorating veterans, the Redwood City’s NFL Alumni Association, and the San Francisco 49ers, who trained at the facility from 1966 to 1988, according to Tanisha Werner, the city’s director of engineering and transportation.
“This building is a representation that we’re all aging,” 49ers quarterback Steve Young said of the facility’s remodel, “but you know what, we don’t age and die, we age and thrive.”
The Veterans Memorial Building and Senior Center will continue to host veteran groups such as the Vietnam Veterans of America and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Energy-efficient lighting, heating and cooling systems, sustainable construction materials and water-efficient design are among the environmentally conscious components of the facility’s design. City officials expect to receive the LEED Platinum designation for the site, the highest level of green building certification.
The YMCA of Silicon Valley is still fundraising for a future facility next to the Veterans Memorial Building and Senior Center. That facility is intended to offer outdoor and indoor pools, an early childhood learning center, a fitness and wellness center and other amenities.
Hundreds of local seniors, veterans and other community members came out to celebrate the ribbon-cutting, including Monica Colodres, 70, who came in honor of her late wife.
Her wife had peripheral neuropathy, which bound her to a wheelchair, so for 20 years she attended the center’s Adaptive Physical Education program, Colodres said, which helps people with disabilities work out. Colodres and her wife came out when the facility first broke ground before she died five years ago, so it meant a lot to see it finally finished.
Another attendee, Elin Larson, was a caregiver for a senior who lived close to the building, but has died. Larson came out in memory of the woman, with whom she recalled walking by the building regularly while it was under construction, observing almost daily “how much it has changed.”
“I think it’s very impressive,” Larson said. “This is like, ‘Wow!’ if I were a veteran, I would be so touched.”
