A historic building in Nevada City that’s been empty for nearly 20 years could soon see a new beginning.<\/p>\n
Once California’s second-oldest hospital and then a county health center, the old Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) building has been abandoned for nearly two decades. Now, community members are pushing to give it a new life.<\/p>\n
“As it stands, it’s really not serving the community and that’s really what we’re hoping to change,” said Jonathan Collier with advocacy group HEW Renew.<\/p>\n
The HEW building sits less than a mile from downtown Nevada City. Empty and overgrown, it’s been abandoned since 2006 after a shooting a few years earlier that left two people dead.<\/p>\n
“It did attract a lot of vandals, a lot of squatters,” Collier said. “Fire is one of the big concerns we have.”<\/p>\n
Collier noted that before a caretaker was hired, the 37,000-square-foot building was broken into roughly four times a month. Now, some community members and the building’s private owner are advocating for its third chance.<\/p>\n
One office has already been revamped. The rest, for now, is waiting to be gutted and reconstructed.<\/p>\n
Originally a hospital, community advocates say the building’s shell is still good, so there’s no need to spend potentially millions of dollars on demolition.<\/p>\n
“Nevada City is really a historic town,” Collier said. “It’s a big part of its ethos and its vision and mission, so historic preservation is just a really important part of Nevada City.”<\/p>\n
A community-inspired design process is underway. HEW Renew wants your input about the building’s future.<\/p>\n
“Obviously, housing comes to the forefront. That’s first and foremost, but there are a lot of innovative ideas, especially because we’re not set in the use of this building,” Collier said.<\/p>\n
Collier added that there’s no shortage of ideas, from a space for local youth to another wellness center to a mixed-use hub. But before anything takes shape, he said that hearing from neighbors is key.<\/p>\n
While there has been some pushback, the project is still in its first phase.<\/p>\n
“A lot of this community conversation would happen after a permit has actually been applied for, so we’re actually moving that to the front of the conversation, so we want to include the community from the beginning,” he said.<\/p>\n
HEW Renew’s next phase is expected to unfold early next year and include more public input. They hope to have a preliminary proposal done six months from now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A historic building in Nevada City that’s been empty for nearly 20 years could soon see a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,8725],"class_list":{"0":"post-9021","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-nevada-city"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}