Way on its way The community center in Gonzales will cap the city’s youths’ dream

| YOUNG VOICES

By Angela Rodríguez

Gonzales, a small town honored by the National Civic League with the All-America City Award last year, is carving its own path toward the future. Its most recent push to pave that path: a community center.

“For many, many years the community has been asking for a space to gather,” City Manager Carmen Gil says. “To share learning, expertise, but also to come together in.”

After a groundbreaking ceremony that took place on April 27, the Dennis and Janice Caprara Community Center Complex has been under construction for less than four months. Gil says, “It is long overdue.”

The project will cost an estimated $34.5 million. The city, population 8,647, has received five state and federal grants totaling $9,095,225, and a loan of $9,825,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. With a contribution of $6,879,042 from city funding, the project has reached about 74% of its funding goal.

The community center is currently in its first phase and it’s set to be completed in December 2025. Phase 1 consists of the Taylor Farms Teen Center, an amphitheater, and the relocation of the Gonzales branch of the Monterey County Library. 

“We want to bring in career and development opportunities. STEM courses, robotics. We hope to partner with Gonzales High School, but also Hartnell, CSUMB, to build a variety of workshops,” Gil says.

Gil says she wants to provide opportunities for youth at the center, starting with asking the construction team to provide internships for young people and proposing to provide teen internships within the Taylor Farms Teen Center. 

The teen innovation center was an idea that began with the city’s youth. When the Gonzales Youth Council was founded in 2015, one of the main ideas that brought the council to life was that of a youth center.

“That center represents our hopes and dreams,” founding Gonzales Youth Council member Cindy Aguilar-Castañeda says.

Aguilar-Castañeda remembers feeling the need for more youth resources. She spent long hours working in the city’s McDonald’s when the library closed, she says. She also experienced lack of guidance when applying to colleges. She spent years working with the City Council and the school board to communicate those needs to the community. 

“We worked really hard to prove that we needed something. To see (the center) come into fruition is really emotional.”

As an adviser/mentor herself now, Aguilar-Castañeda looks back on the city employees and mentors such as Michelle Slade, who encouraged the youth council to “shoot for the stars,” assuring them that everything else would fall into place. 

Aguilar-Castañeda is grateful for Gonzales’ continued investment in its youth. “It’s really great to know the city included youth voices throughout the planning process.”

Aliyah Castillo, a 2024 Gonzales High graduate who served as a Gonzales Youth Council Commissioner, described her experience engaging in work for the center ranging from reviewing tiles to drafting up drawings. Last summer, the GYC finally collected feedback and ideas from youth in the community and handed it over to the building and design team, sealing the deal.

“It’s really empowering,” she says. “I think this community center will be a huge help for the youth and for the community as a whole.”

Aguilar-Castañeda agrees. “Some of us struggled a lot getting through high school, not knowing what the future was going to look like, wanting to provide for our families. Now there’s going to be a whole new generation who will have a place where they can go to ask for support and for resources.”

City Manager Gil says her goal is to create a multi-generational facility which can be used by the entire community.

She envisions cultural performances in the amphitheater, community gatherings to vocalize concerns and organize action, youth engaging in the construction of their lives via the resources she hopes to program the center with — all possibilities which are well within reach. 

Castillo shares her goal. “I hope people will bring forth their creative minds into building something special here in our home town.”

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