SAN DIEGO — A project near Chollas Pkwy and University Avenue is underway to create a Refugee and Immigrant Culture Hub. It is a center set to offer wrap-around services once it’s completed in the heart of Mid-City.
“What's really unique about it and sort of first of its kind is that it is not just centering and serving the refugees of this area but it is designed and will be owned by the community,” Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans (PANA) Director of Strategic Partnership Rachael Lozano Castro said.
Lozano Castro tells CBS 8, Pana is the group stewarding the process holding the land purchased last year. She adds the group is partnering with more than a dozen refugee serving organizations in the City Heights area.
“So all of it is really designed to be a full community redevelopment where this community can thrive, be able to have greater mobility, be able to live in houses that really represent their needs,” Lozano Castro said.
Once it's complete, the center will offer essential services including a health and wellness clinic, gathering spaces and transitional and affordable housing.
“This part of MidCity where we were at …this part of City Heights where were at has historically been where we have received many refugees that's refugees from Burma, Vietnam, Somalia, Ethiopia, ”Lozano Castro said.
“I’ve been dreaming about this project a couple years now,” Karen Organization Executive Director Nao Kabashima said.
For Kabashima, this project has been a dream in the making. She is part of the Karen Organization of San Diego, a community organization which serves refugees from Burma.
“This is a space that you can come, you belong here and that's the huge dream of our community,” Kabashima said.
The project is expected to break ground in the future with its completion expected in 2030.