Philippine Community Center will be First of its Kind in Wisconsin

Some people dedicate enormous amounts of time and resources to a project and let out a huge sigh of relief when it is finally completed.

 As of Tuesday, Romulo “Gerry” Ramos was finally allowed to exhale.

Ramos, Executive Director of the Philippine Cultural and Civic Center Foundation (PCCCF) in Milwaukee, has been trying to find a home for a Philippine Community Center and free medical clinic for more than a decade, and now has one right here in Greenfield.

On Tuesday, the Greenfield Common Council approved the site, building and landscaping review for the center and clinic, both of which will open in renovated portions of the underutilized of the Milwaukee County Parks system.

“It’s been awhile since we started looking for a site,” Ramos said. “It’s very exciting.”

Ramos and the PCCCF have wanted to open a community center for more than a decade and explored Greenfield locations for several years.

He first tried to obtain space in the city’s old police station before it was renovated into a library. He then hoped to build his center inside the old library as part of the city’s Park and Recreation Department’s Community Center project, but those plans fell through as well.

“The parks needed more space for their programs than they expected, and they wanted to be able to use it for themselves and decided to keep it,” Ramos said.

Ramos and the PCCCF even looked into purchasing land at at cost of $2 million before turning their attention to underutilized facilities available for nonprofit organizations. Ramos finally latched on to the Zablocki Park Pavilion.

In July, the PCCCF signed a 35-year lease agreement with Milwaukee County to use the location and has begun raising funds to help pay for the renovations costs and upkeep. Ramos said grant money will be used to sustain the free medical clinic.

“I was disappointed we couldn’t work anything out in our community center, but I was thrilled they still found a place in Greenfield,” Greenfield Mayor Michael Neitzke said.

A 9-hole, par-3 golf course, soccer baseball and softball fields, children’s playground equipment, basketball courts and picnic areas surround the 8,800-square-foot Zablocki Park Pavilion.

The Philippine Community Center, which will be open to all and not just Filipinos, will have 1,200 square feet of dedicated space on the upper level for a reception area, library and activity areas for meetings, senior activities, computer and language classes.

The Milwaukee County Parks system will retain the use of an upper level community room that can be rented out except on days it’s reserved for use by the Philippine center.

The center, which will promote the Filipino culture with various displays and a library consisting of mainly Filipino materials and resources, will be one of just a few of its kind in the country, according to Ramos, who said similar centers exist only in Hawaii, Florida and Ohio. Ramos said there are approximately 7,000 Filipinos living in the Milwaukee area, including many in both Greenfield and Greendale.

The free medical clinic, located on the lower level of the pavilion and staffed by volunteer doctors and nurses, will continue to serve the uninsured and underinsured, as it has for more than 2,800 patients that have been seen approximately 6,000 times at its current location of 535 N. 27th Street, Milwaukee, since 2000.

The clinic will be opened from 9 a.m. to noon every second and fourth Saturday of each month.

When the clinic is not open, an 1,100-square-foot open area will be used for various planned activities such as exercise programs, ballroom and folk dancing and martial arts training.

“We just wanted to have a place that was accessible so that people who wanted or needed to be served could go,” he said. “Ours is a community center to serve the underserved people population. Ours is a community center that can benefit everyone in Greenfield.”

Ramos, whose own architecture firm, Ramos & Associates, provided free conceptual drawings for the center, hopes construction begins by next month that the clinic is open by Jan. 14. The building is not air conditioned, so one of the larger projects will be the installation of a new heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. In addition, all of the windows need to be replaced.