Large fire destroys vacant former youth center in San Jose that community members wanted to restore

SAN JOSE, Calif. (KGO) -- Flames engulfed an abandoned youth center early Friday morning in East San Jose. The destruction came after many in the community fought to reopen the building.

The vacant former site of the Mexican American Community Services Agency youth center, on Sinclair Drive went up in flames just after 1 a.m. It grew to a three-alarm fire.

Fire crews spent the entire morning putting out the fire. Classes at the nearby Renaissance Academy at Mathson were canceled for the day.

"There is a school on the opposite side of it, and clearly it's surrounded by a neighborhood," Battalion Chief Leia Diaz said. "But due to our firefighters, good efforts and their strong work at this, they were able to keep it to the structure of origin."

Now with the fire under control, attention turns back to MACSA, and the future of the site.

"Watching this burn, it's breaking my heart," said San Jose City Council Member Peter Ortiz.

Closed for nearly a decade, the building was home to programs that changed lives, including Ortiz's.

"I myself went to the MACSA program when I was a young man, when I was gang impacted, and it's this program that was able to give me the courage to leave the gang and kind of turn my life around," he said.

Community groups have been pushing the Alum Rock Union School District, who owns the land, to keep the building from being demolished and return it to a youth center.

This summer, the advocates behind that movement said they were able to make progress with the school board, many of them speaking about it in public comment in the school board meeting the night before the fire.

"We were talking about issues from fundraising to renovation to security," said Victor Vasquez of SOMOS Mayfair, one of the groups advocating for the building. "We were making really strong progress to figure out a plan."

For now, they say the path forward isn't clear, but they're hopeful.

"It's very shocking, but I still believe in the power of our community, that we can rally behind this building, this place," Vasquez said. "In my point of view, it's not over."

There were no reports of injuries, the cause of the fire is under investigation.

Emergency meeting called after fire

Community members in East San Jose say even though a beloved former youth center went up in flames - their dreams of reopening didn't go with it.

On Friday people left notes and flowers, remembering the former site of the Mexican American Community Services Agency.

Angelina Rodriguez, Founder of the nonprofit Concrete Rose Coalition, would play at the center when she was younger.

"Even now looking at the structure of the building that's left I feel like it screams cultura, you can see it you can see the resemblance of empires that were built," Rodriguez said.

The youth center, known as MACSA for short, closed around 2016.

Danny Sanchez was a volunteer in 2012.

"Gang prevention and intervention we did some re-entry work here. You know we laughed here, we cried here - I'm just a little emotional because every Friday night we'd have about 80 kids," Sanchez said.

Alum Rock Union Elementary School District owns the property. A year ago, the district considered demolition and then postponed it. Organizations have been fighting to open a youth center there once again.

"The School of Arts and SOMOS said we would fundraise for the building, we will operate the building, you know the programs are not a problem for us," Vasquez said.

Less than 24 hours after the start of the fire, the Alum Rock Union Elementary School District has called for an emergency meeting for Saturday at noon. They will vote on whether to demolish the building. Organizers say they're turning this moment of loss into a moment of movement.

"The issues haven't changed the students at the district need a library, they need a gym, we have some of the highest incarcerations of young people in the county - the issues don't change. The building is burnt but the solution to it - we still have to go for it," Vasquez said.

Community leaders say this was more than a building - it was the spirit and the safe space tied to MACSA.