The Tennyson Corridor neighborhood in South Hayward is a diverse, culturally vibrant area experiencing new city investment and community involvement. As part of a citywide action plan to co-create a vision with residents, the Stack Youth & Family Center is vital to this transformation, responding directly to a community seeking nature-focused spaces, public investment, and stronger social networks. The facility serves as a multifunctional cultural center, social service hub, and economic driver for the community, providing programs focused on youth and families.
Input from local youth, the County Supervisor, the city’s Mayor, and the district’s U.S. Representative shaped the facility’s design. The center includes 34,800 SF of new space, an L-shaped North Building, added to the adaptive reuse of the 4,750 SF renovated Matt Jimenez Community Center South Building. The two buildings and park are connected through a grand paseo, featuring flexible outdoor spaces and a Community Events Plaza.
The public-facing entrances, garden plaza, and paseo lend themselves to a shared, welcoming environment that, when paired with the colocation of multi-service offerings, emphasizes accessible social and behavioral health services through everyday social spaces. The facility features a main lobby, an art-filled lounge, a satellite library, a cafe, learning labs, pediatric medical, dental, and behavioral health services, a new preschool and daycare, and updates to an existing gymnasium, all housed within an interconnected space that seamlessly blends indoor and outdoor spaces. Throughout the center, the interior-exterior layout is organized as a sequence of distinct but connected “social territories,” giving neurodiverse youth easy-to-select routes and preferred spots that match their own sensory and social comfort levels.
Youth-led collaboration between our design team and Tennyson Corridor residents informed the Stack’s role as a connector between schools, service providers, and families. The center’s final form is the physical embodiment of their vision: South Hayward’s “civic heart,” where belonging, visibility, and cultural pride come together in a safe gathering place. DLR Group provided architecture, planning, programming, community outreach, construction documents, and construction administration.
