Bresee Community Center

Pictures

Overview

The number of people using our services has expanded dramatically in recent years—300% in the last four years alone. With this increasing demand for our services, we outgrew our old space and renovated a building near our old facility, calling it the Bresee Community Center. The new Center is 15,000 square feet, three times the size of our old facility. The additional space has allowed us to more effectively serve our current clients, as well as increased the number of people we serve. We will double the number of people we serve annually from 3,000 to 6,000. Additionally, We will be creating a small park between the Bresee Community Center and the Los Angeles First Church of the Nazarene. The Bresee Community Center is a place for young people and families to gather and to take advantage of recreational, educational and social opportunities, as well as find a sense of belonging and community.

Bresee Youth Center
The Learning Center acknowledges a variety of learning styles, with space for individual and group studying, and meeting with mentors. The Lounge and Recreation area accommodates more young people and will allow students to have a safe and positive place to spend time and participate in educational and recreational activities. Our student-run Bank and Store continue to create jobs for young people who keep track of attendance and our educational incentive system, which allows students to earn points and use them to purchase snacks, gift certificates, and other prizes in our student store.

CyberHood
The CyberHood Computer Training Center in the Bresee Community Center is double the size of our old lab and contains projectors and screens for classes and a retractable wall so the Lab can be divided into two classrooms. The retractable wall allows us to keep half of the room available for open access, while holding a class on the other side. The additional space of our new building allows us to address another pressing concern – adult access to technology. The creation of the CyberHood CyberCafé has allocated space exclusively for adult use (currently 12 computers). In addition to computers, the CyberHood CyberCafé contains fax machines, copy machines, phones, and other technology necessary to learn office skills and pursue jobs.

Bresee Health Services
Bresee Health Services was opened to address the overwhelming need for Health Services in our community. Nearly 75% of families in our community have no health insurance. Eight of ten of these families are the working poor who are not provided health insurance by their employers. Bresee Health Services was established in 1994 and until 2001 used a converted church nursery with makeshift examining tables for doctors and nurses to see patients. In the new facility, we have created the Bresee Health Clinic with four fully equipped examining rooms, a doctor's office, and a small medical lab. Over the course of three years in the new building, we will be able to increase our number of annual patient visits from 4,000 to 12,000.

Community Meeting Space
The new Bresee Community Center has a multi-purpose room capable of holding 120 people. Young people are able to use this room for dances and social events and other members of the community can use the room for meetings and other social gatherings. There is also a Board Room/Community Meeting Room capable of accommodating gatherings of 25-30 people and contains state of the art mutlimedia capability.

Neighborhood Park
In addition to the development of Bresee Community Center to serve the whole family, the building project also includes closing a street (2nd Street between Juanita & Bimini) adjacent to the new Center that will create a 20,000 square foot pocket park that will be open to local residents and clients at the Center. The development of this park will begin to address the severe lack of green space available in this part of Los Angeles (.38 acres per 1,000 people).