EMERYVILLE CENTER FOR COMMUNITY LIFE
The Emeryville Center of Community Life (ECCL) is an award-winning Joint Use Partnership between the Emery Unified School District (EUSD) and City of Emeryville. The $96 million center brings educational, health, family, and recreational services onto one central site and provides opportunities for other partners to offer community-enriching services.
TIMELINE
2010-2017
STATUS
Built
SIZE
7 acres
The ECCL is a facility for the community designed by the community. The design process actively engaged the EUSD school board, City-Schools Committee, teachers, city and district staff, EUSD Facilities Committee, planning staff, and community members through a variety of engagements that included over 20 community design workshops.
These workshops established common ground between disparate groups and evolved a design for the center that was embraced through extensive community participation and collective intelligence.
The process itself cultivated critical community participation with outreach targeted especially to youth and the full age and demographic spectrum that is the Emeryville community. Ultimately it was the diverse voice of the community that determined the character of the final design.
Fifteen years in the making, ECCL is one of the nation’s first joint-use facilities where City and School cooperatively occupy a shared site. So novel was City-School district partnership that it required state legislation to modify the California Education Code, which prior to enactment restricted nonschool use of school buildings. School Board President John Affeldt stated, “Communities across the nation will be looking to Emeryville to emulate our unique partnership.”
CLIENT
Emeryville Center of Community Life
COLLABORATORS
Nexus Partners
