Since it closed as a high school in 1979, Cubberley Community Center has served as both a critical hub for Palo Alto's artists, athletes and nonprofit groups and a projection screen for the city's hopes and dreams.

The city, which owns 8 acres of Cubberley, has been talking about demolishing and rebuilding the dilapidated Middlefield Road complex for well over a decade. Palo Alto Unified School District, which owns the remaining 27 acres, views the community center a possible site for a future school, should a need for such a school arise.

And hundreds of residents participated in a planning exercise that in 2019 resulted in a new Cubberley vision that includes a new wellness center, a new theater and spaces for nonprofit organizations, adult-education classrooms, studios, a café and other community amenities.

Now, with the city and the school district reviving their talks about Cubberley's redevelopment, architect David Hirsch is presenting his own vision, which is informed and inspired by all the prior ones.

Hirsch, who serves on the city's Architectural Review Board, is proposing a plan that would bring to Cubberley a wide range of new amenities arranged in a cluster of buildings along the Middlefield Road side of the 35-acre complex. And unlike in prior plans, his would proceed in such a way that the city could improve its own property without requiring the school district's land or support.

Hirsch envisions the redevelopment proceeding in two phases. The first one, which could be launched relatively soon, would center on the city's portion of Cubberley and the playing fields adjacent to that portion. Its most critical component would be a tiered a four-story building with skylights and outdoor patios and with spaces for classrooms, studios, a café and nonprofit groups, which today are scattered throughout the campus.

The second phase would unfold in a more distant future, based on the school district's needs, wishes and budget. It would involve constructing two additional school buildings, which would connect via elevated glassy platforms to each other and to a new classroom building on the city's side. The three-building classroom complex would include two entrances facing Middlefield, according to the map that Hirsch provided.

A key component of Hirsch's plan is moving parking from surface lots to a new underground garage that would be constructed under the classroom buildings. The stretch of land on the city's side between Middlefield and the playing fields that today is used largely for parking would accommodate new buildings with maker spaces, senior services, child care facilities and landscaping.

Other improvements to the school's portion of the property would follow further in the future and could include a new gym complex with a swimming pool, a theater and a smaller black box performance space above an art gallery. These amenities would surround an expansive courtyard that could be shared by the school and the broader community.

By pitching the idea, Hirsch is hoping to jumpstart a planning process for Cubberley that, despite recent signs of hope, remains hazy and unfunded. He participated in the planning exercises that were launched in 2018 by the city's consultant, Concordia, and said he found them effective in gauging the community's views about best uses for Cubberley.

The plans quickly fell apart, however, with the district declaring that it has no intention of redeveloping existing facilities and that it cannot legally move ahead with bond measures for Cubberley improvements that are not directly tied to education.

"It was a program for the future that I thought was quite successful, but from that point on, it kind of fell apart," Hirsch said in an interview.

Hirsch's plan includes many of the same amenities that were in the Concordia plan — a gym, a theater and a variety of new community spaces. It also embraces that plan's vision of replacing Cubberley's current configuration of squat one-story buildings with taller and denser structures, thus opening up more land for greenspace and recreational amenities.

While the Concordia plan called for consolidating Cubberley's services into two-story buildings, Hirsch is eying larger and denser structures that, if built, could open up even more open space elsewhere in the community center.

But unlike the Concordia plan, Hirsch's scheme largely abandons the idea of the city and the school district building Cubberley as a true joint partnership. Rather, it would allow the city to proceed with construction on its own side, with the new classroom building and other amenities.

"It allows you to get in some of the adult education classrooms and dance studios in there, and the administration offices could be moved there in the future. You can have FOPAL (Friends of the Palo Alto Library, a nonprofit that supports the local library system) and a café and all the facilities that are scattered around the rest of Cubberley and could move into the existing building," Hirsch said.

The idea, he said, is to construct in the first phase a classroom building that could fill a large variety of functions, with open meeting spaces, skylights and an unique building structure.

"It's what's being done frequently in a number of schools across the country, but we don't have it here," Hirsch said, referring to his plan for the initial classroom building.

The plan comes at a time when both the city and the school district are reconsidering their positions on Cubberley. After petering out in 2019, the effort to redevelop the center received a boost in March, when the district submitted a letter to the city formally inviting proposals for a land swap that would increase the city's Cubberley footprint.

While those discussions remain in a preliminary phase, the city is preparing to make some immediate upgrades at Cubberley in the coming year. The newly approved budget includes more $4 million in Cubberley repairs in the coming year, including roof replacements and installation of a new HVAC system in the Cubberley gym to replace the existing system that was installed in 1950s.

According to the city budget, the existing system is currently not functioning because of multiple leaks in the steel hot water piping, which is located in the walls and under the roof. These leaks have caused "significant water damage in the walls, floors and crawl spaces of the gyms," the budget states.

Palo Alto's capital improvement program also calls for building a new restroom near the Cubberley field in the coming year and replacing the turf in fiscal year 2028.

The five-year capital plan does not, however, include funding for the type of full-scale redevelopment of Cubberley that many in the community have long advocated. The only money that it allocates for this effort is $326,212 for a feasibility study that would "determine the facility needs and scope of the entire redevelopment project."

"This study will also inform the cost estimate for the construction updates needed at the facility, which will be included in a future five-year capital improvement plan," the budget states.

The slow pace of Cubberley progress has frustrated some longtime advocates of the center's redevelopment. Ken Horowitz, who has lobbied the council for years to redevelop the aged center, suggested during recent budget meetings that the city should think bigger when it comes to Cubberley improvements.

During a May hearing on the capital budget, Horowitz lamented the fact that the city won't be launching its fiscal survey until 2026.

"There are buildings that are relatively unsafe today," Horowitz told the council's Finance Committee. "There are roofs that are leaking; we have pipes that burst. And we need to do something about it."