The article below is from today’s West County Times.

Posted on Thu, Feb. 22, 2007

Richmond's Maritime Child Development Center will undergo a $4 million renovation intended to make the 64-year-old building once again a vital part of the city's south side.

The City Council provided the final piece of the funding puzzle Tuesday night when it unanimously approved $500,000 for the center's rehabilitation. The council's action will leverage a California Cultural and Historic Endowment grant of $2 million and a West Contra Costa Unified School District contribution of $1.5 million.

Contra Costa County, which owns the center -- part of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park -- will lease the property to the Rosie the Riveter Trust for $1 a year.

Once the center is rehabilitated, it will provide space for the growing Richmond Child Development Center charter school, which serves families in the Iron Triangle, Santa Fe and Coronado neighborhoods. The charter school currently is operating out of four portables adjacent to the center.

"We're happy to be part of this partnership," county Supervisor John Gioia said Wednesday. "We believe it's important to have child development on the property."

The renovation project will include a new roof and replacement of the wood foundation with more durable concrete. The interior of the building will be modernized and made suitable for use as a school. The center also will provide space for a day care museum that will include a classroom with war-era artifacts.

The council borrowed the $500,000 from the Revolving Loan Fund, which finances residential blight abatement on properties taken over by the court in redevelopment zones. The city likely will replace the Revolving Loan Fund money from bond proceeds next year.

"I am delighted," said Councilman Tom Butt, who helped write renovation grants. "It's important that the historic nature of the building will be preserved, but it's more important that Richmond will have an answer to a critical shortage of preschool facilities."

The National Park Service will run the center's museum, which will provide a historical context for the institution of day care, a service most American working families and businesses now rely on, said National Park Cultural Resource Manager Lucy Lawliss.

"We can use a place like the Maritime Center to tell the national story of child care and connect Richmond into that bigger story," Lawliss said.

The center was built to support the thousands of women who went to work as welders, mechanics and draftswomen in the Kaiser Shipyards during World War II. The center provided day care for as many as 180 preschoolers, which made it the largest such facility in the country.

The center's staff, which included nutritionists, psychiatrists and certified teachers, used the latest theories in child development so that Rosie mothers could have peace of mind while they worked long hours in the shipyards.

Councilman John Marquez, whose two sons attended the day care facility in the 1960s, recently toured the center's main building, where war-era toys and children's bed cubicles are still in place.

"I got chills when I walked in and saw what it was like in the 1940s," he said.

The Maritime Center is part of a cluster of historic war-era buildings. They include the Kaiser Field Hospital, Fire Station No. 67A, Nystrom School and Nystrom Village, which consists of four blocks of war-time, single-family homes. Nystrom School is currently undergoing a $33 million renovation, and there are plans to renovate the other structures once funding is secured.