Nearly two years after the project was first pitched, the La Jolla Recreation Center has a new feature: a row of benches on the sidewalk next to the bocce court.
The four 8-foot-long benches were installed over a span of eight hours May 29 beside the regulation-size bocce court along the Draper Avenue side of the Rec Center grounds.
Local bocce player Chas. Dye told the La Jolla Community Recreation Group in August 2024 that the benches were needed because “the sessions usually are about two hours, and two hours can be a lengthy time to be on your feet.”
Players were bringing their own chairs for a place to sit.
New benches are now available on the sidewalk next to the bocce court at the La Jolla Recreation Center. (Chas. Dye)
Dye approached Enhance La Jolla about installing the benches under the group’s permit with the city of San Diego and serving as the nonprofit representative for donations to the cause.
Enhance La Jolla has authority to augment services provided by the city, including landscape maintenance, street and sidewalk cleaning, litter and graffiti abatement and additional trash collection. It also can privately fund and complete projects in public spaces, like the bench installation.
The nonprofit stated June 2 that the purpose of the project was to create a seating area both for bocce players and other Rec Center visitors.
Dye facilitated fundraising of more than $14,000 and thanked Enhance La Jolla President Ed Witt and Village Maintenance Assessment District Manager Brian Earley for their organizational support, as well as others who assisted the effort, including the Kiwanis Club of La Jolla, White Sands La Jolla and bocce-playing benefactors.
“We are delighted to deliver these benches after 20 long months of fundraising, public meetings, permitting, manufacture and, of course installation,” Dye said in a statement. “I had no idea of the effort and cost required to bolt a bench to a sidewalk.”
La Jolla resident Chas. Dye was a leader of a project to install new benches beside the La Jolla Recreation Center’s bocce court. (Ana Catania)
A ribbon-cutting event is expected for those who contributed to the project.
The bocce court, which had been in the works since 2017, was installed in 2021. Its estimated $23,000 cost was funded by the nonprofit Friends of the La Jolla Recreation Center. La Jolla philanthropy group Las Patronas donated a bocce ball set. ♦