2022 Summer Retreat
About African-American Cultural Center Project
The AACC Board of Directors chose to partner with San Jose’s our housing partner as it’s housing and project developer.
Our housing partner is a recognized leader in creating green, affordable housing and like our housing partner’s other new construction projects, the African American Cultural Center Project will be designed as a LEED Platinum project. In addition to sustainable building strategies such as selecting healthy building materials, incorporating water and energy efficient measures, and providing each household with free Eco Passes, our housing partner will seek out innovative new technologies to showcase in this signature building.
The housing partner team chose Architects, Moody Nolan, a nationally recognized, largest Black-owned architectural business headquartered in Ohio, in partnership with YA Studios, another Black owned architectural firm from San Francisco are the Architectural firms of record for the project. Together both firms have created beautiful renderings, and in doing so, have shown the greatness of their experience, partnership and commitment to this iconic project. Recently, preliminary renderings have been submitted to the City of San Jose’s, Housing and Planning departments by our architectural teams.
African-American Cultural Center, African-American Community Service Agency welcomes AACC project African American Architects
On Saturday November 20, 2021, the African American Cultural Center project (AACC Project), our housing partner and the African-American Community Service agency, hosted the architects from San Francisco based YA Studios and nationally recognized Moody-Nolan for a meet and greet breakfast at Bills Cafe. Once breakfast concluded, the group toured project relevant sites throughout San Jose in transportation provided by Mosaic Global transportation, in a world class 16 passenger Mercedes Executive SUV. Our first stop was at 2001 The Alameda in San Jose, CA. This location is home to the Cultural Center housing, retail spaces, and commercial development that will be available to the community in the future.
After visiting the development site, the next stop on our tour was the Roots Community Health Clinic and Ujima Adult and Family Services, a shared nearby facility. There we met Alma Burrell, Roots Clinic Regional Director. During the facility tour, there was a class from Ujima Adult and Family services of Teen Youth meeting on this beautiful Saturday morning. Roots is a community driven clinic being the first community clinic in Santa Clara county to begin Covid-19 testing and currently provide vaccines to the community. Next we traveled to the local commerce and transportation centers to familiarize the architects with the surrounding areas. After viewing Marketplace mall on Coleman Street, we headed to Diridon station, the future home of BART, High Speed Rail and CalTrain. From there the group traveled to San Jose City Hall, on the way to the Mexican Heritage center. The staff at the Heritage Center welcomed our group as they gave a wonderful tour of the iconic Mexican Heritage site with Performing arts, theatre, school and other facilities. While we were there, people from the community were receiving Covid-19 vaccines. From the Mexican Heritage center, we visited the beautiful under construction Vietnamese Service Center.