PG&E Donates Former Office to Local YMCA

In an effort to expand community partnerships, PG&E will donate an 8,000-square-foot office in Downtown Berkeley to the Berkeley-Albany YMCA on Friday.

The YMCA will use the building at 2111 Martin Luther King Jr. Way to open a teen outreach center, doubling the amount of participants in its programs that help teens with college preparation and job training and provide mentoring and community service opportunities.

It will also use the space to partner with other nonprofit organizations in the area.

“This is something the community has wanted for 16 years,” said Cynthia Peterson, the Berkeley-Albany YMCA Public Relations Director.

The Berkeley-Albany YMCA offers family-oriented programs that focus on the overall wellness of teens, adults, children and the elderly.

Currently, the YMCA has a 400- square-foot center in Downtown Berkeley, which restricts the number of participants in its programs, Peterson said.

Before the building can be renovated to create the center, PG&E must conduct a study to test the safety of the building, Peterson said.

YMCA leaders and local public school officials said the donation will alleviate the shortage of teen recreational centers in Berkeley.

The new center will provide more safe alternatives for teen recreation, said Mark Coplan, spokesperson for the Berkeley Unified School District.

“This will make a huge positive impact,” he said.

When PG&E centralized their offices in Downtown Berkeley, the building was under-utilized. The company chose the YMCA for the donation because they have worked with them through charitable programs organized by the city of Berkeley, said Public Relations Director David Eisenhauer.

“We wanted to do something with the building that would also benefit the community,” he said.

PG&E will work with the Berkeley-Albany YMCA to make the donated building more energy-efficient by offering rebates on energy saving appliances such as solar panels, refrigerators and lights, Eisenhauer said.

The Berkeley-Albany YMCA will recruit a teen task force to help architects design a center that caters to the teenage population.

An event will be held on Friday at the building site to celebrate its donation.

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