Gym, nonprofits vie to occupy downtown Palo Alto space

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When Form Fitness left downtown Palo Alto in 2022 after falling behind on rent, it left the city with a gaping vacancy and an exciting opportunity.

The building that the gym had occupied for nearly two decades at 445 Bryant St. is owned by the city and it has a very specific function: to raise money for local youth. And while the City Council often frets about downtown’s vacancy problems, this is the one downtown vacancy that members actually have the power to fill.

On March 11, council members met in a closed session to consider the next tenant for the two-story building, which was constructed in 2004 and which the city had initially planned to turn into a teen center. But after a survey of local youth found that most teenagers would prefer to have new programs rather than a new center, the council pivoted to renting the building out and using the proceeds to fund programs for teenagers.

Officially, that’s still the mission. Palo Alto’s current budget commits the city to using the rental revenue from the 7,410-square-foot building to “fund programs specifically for Palo Alto youth and teens.”

That mission, however, is now bumping up against some of the city’s other priorities, including its desire to make downtown more inviting to seniors and bikers. While the council did not publicly discuss 445 Bryant St. or report any action after its closed-session meeting, the agenda shows that the list of potential tenants includes a gym, a legal firm and two nonprofit groups, one that fixes and sells used bicycles and another that runs a nutrition program for local seniors.

Donna Johnson, a personal trainer and downtown resident, hopes the Bryant Street building will lead her toward her dream of starting a gym. Her proposal would bring an Iron 24 Fitness + Recovery gym to the Bryant Street building, a familiar use for a facility that has housed a gym for most of its existence.

Johnson called her proposed gym an “amazing opportunity to contribute to our neighbors and neighboring communities,” while also providing economic benefits to the city. Gym visitors, she said, typically come to the downtown area several times per week. When they do, they often patronize nearby businesses, enhancing commerce in the downtown area.

It also helps that this particular location is at the center of downtown and can be easily reached on foot, bicycle and public transportation, she said. A fitness center here, she said, would further the council’s goals on enhancing both the city’s economic recovery and community health.

“Opportunities of health and fitness are essential to the health and well-being of the community, including physical and mental health,” Johnson said. “Fitness is a lot like mental acuity. Unless you’re actively working on it, you’re losing it.”

But while Johnson wants 445 Bryant St. to serve as the starting point of her journey, John St. Clair and Bill Blodgett want it to mark the end of theirs. St. Clair and Blodgett both serve on the board of directors at La Comida, a nonprofit that runs a lunch program for low-income seniors. Historically housed in the Avenidas building at 450 Bryant St., the nonprofit has been looking for a permanent downtown home ever since Avenidas reconstructed its headquarters in 2017. The new building did not have the space to accommodate La Comida’s programs.

Since then, La Comida found a permanent home in south Palo Alto, at Stevenson House. In the downtown area, it temporarily used the First United Methodist Church on Hamilton Avenue to hand out lunches. It had to suspend that program last summer because of grant requirements that mandated it to return to congregate lunches to remain eligible for funding. Last July, it returned to Avenidas on a temporary basis, with the goal of finding a permanent home sometime soon.

Both St. Clair and his wife, council member Lydia Kou, are longtime La Comida volunteers. St. Clair argued that the Bryant Street location is perfect for the lunch program because of its proximity to both Avenidas and residential communities such as Lytton Gardens, Webster House and Barker Hotel.

“If you’re a member of Avenidas, you can just go there in the morning, do your program that you have there and at lunch time just walk right across the street and have some of our nutritious senior lunch time meals,” St. Clair said.

La Comida has been around for 52 years, he said, and its services are needed more than ever. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the nonprofit saw its demand more than double. In its last fiscal year, it served more than 77,000 meals to Palo Alto seniors, he said.

“There is a huge demand for our program there,” St. Clair said.

Blodgett observed that nearly all senior nutrition programs in Santa Clara County are located in community centers and city facilities. This includes the nutrition programs in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Milpitas and Morgan Hill, as well as 11 sites in San Jose.

Blodgett said La Comida is hoping to attain a “sense of permanency” and get out of the mode of looking for new locations.

“This is one step in a very long journey for us,” he said.

La Comida would be vying against at least one other nonprofit group: Silicon Valley Bicycle Exchange. Founded in Mountain View in 1993, the organization obtained its nonprofit status in 2014 and moved to its current location at 3961 East Bayshore Road in 2019, according to the nonprofit’s website.

The Bicycle Exchange trains volunteers on repairing bikes and donates refurbished bikes and helmets to the Menlo Park Veterans Administration Hospital, the Bill Wilson Center and other social-service organizations.

The latest addition to the list of possible tenants is Stealthmode LLC, a Mountain View-based corporation that is tied to the company LegalZoom, which provides legal services to businesses.

The council didn’t take any reportable action after the March 11 discussion. But a key question that members have to answer before they make any deal is: How should they balance their commitment to fund teen programs with their desire to support local nonprofits that provide important services?

The council routinely approves cheap or free rent to nonprofit groups like Avenidas, the city’s premier senior services provider, and LifeMoves, which is now building a transitional housing complex near the Baylands. It also offers discounted rate to the dozens of nonprofit group at Cubberley Community Center, where it leases land from the school district.

But in this case, giving the nonprofits a discount would necessarily mean less money for teen programs, a tough tradeoff in a year when Mayor Greer Stone made youth well-being one of his top priorities.

At least one council member believes that the city should stop effectively giving away its properties to nonprofit groups. In November 2022, when the City Council was considering what to do about Form Fitness, a gym that had fallen behind on its rent during the pandemic and was now facing eviction, Council member Greg Tanaka made a case for charging all tenants market rates.

“I think all tenants should pay market rent and if we think they bring value to the city, and we want to help them out, we should pay them money,” Tanaka said.