The SHARE Center needs you now!

For five years Southern Humboldt citizens have been seeking to buy our historic Garberville school on Sprowel Creek Road to house an arts, recreation, education, and community hospitality center serving people of all ages.

This Mission style building, most recently known as the Osprey School, was designed by noted Eureka architect Franklin Thompson Georgeson in 1939 and was the first earthquake-safe school in northern California. An evolving group of Southern Humboldt citizens has devised a plan to save this fine building for public benefit by developing much-needed housing in the old playing fields behind the school. But what sort of housing should this be? We will be creating a new neighborhood in the heart of Garberville, and we invite you to look over the options we have researched and developed so far and improve them with your thoughts and desires. Our explorations are a basis for discussion, not an end product. Please help us to make our plans, and our community, better. And above all, PLEASE state clearly your desire to save the school building for community use, under public ownership, forever.

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SHARE’s purpose is two-fold: to enrich our communities by creating urgently needed new housing in the heart of Garberville, and to transform the historic and irreplaceable school building into a regional community center.

Imagine the possibilities: The old gymnasium serving as a dedicated performing arts theater, with fixed seating, flexible backstage space, and a permanent stage. With a permanent location, the Teen Center and our local Wailaki tribe already in the building will be able to grow and develop services. Visitors can come to a community hospitality space to be oriented to all our region has to offer— our public lands, our many stores and businesses, our history, and our creative arts.

Imagine a place to meet and mingle, with an outdoor pool and patio behind the community center. Beyond the pool, sustainably designed housing takes full advantage of the vast south-facing roof of the old school for solar hot water and electricity.

We envision a cutting-edge development embracing a museum, arts and activities spaces, possibly even an outdoor swimming pool—but to bring possibilities into being we must first obtain the building.

We must demonstrate to a skeptical school administration and board that greater Southern Humboldt can and will utilize this irreplaceable building in the heart of Garberville as an arts, recreation and education center for our growing and evolving community. We must also meet the School Board's June deadline for a bid, either by entering into a contract with Danco for workforce housing by April, or by risking the loss of another year and possibly the entire opportunity to bid by attempting to raise $1.5 million in building capital for a private development plan.

Please enrich our vision for Garberville’s future by sharing your ideas with us. We can save something beautiful, and create something wonderful, only by standing up for the extraordinary opportunities before us. This is a rare chance for public pressure and involvement to make a critical difference for the future of all our communities in Southern Humboldt, Northern Mendocino and Western Trinity counties. If your voice isn’t heard loud and clear, we will lose this irreplaceable resource. Learn about the issues, think about the possibilities, and help us to build a greater future than we can dream of today.

Enjoy your visit to this website, and please share your suggestions for how we can make this site, and our project, better.