The long and anguished financial death throes of La Casa de la Raza — a center started 47 years ago as an idealistic dream to provide a cultural and political hub for the city’s Latino community — could soon come to a merciful end. La Casa Board President Mark Martinez and Vice President Michael Gonzalez announced Monday their plans to sell the community center on East Montecito Street to pay off the $1.2 million debt that forced La Casa into bankruptcy proceedings two years ago. They expressed a glimmer of hope that some philanthropic-minded benefactor might step in, purchase the property, and create a space where La Casa’s mission could continue. Failing that, they expressed an intention to use whatever funds are left after creditors are paid off to underwrite programs consistent with La Casa’s goals. “It took blood, sweat, and tears to get this started,” Martinez said. “We still have hope, dreams, and prayers that it can stay alive.”
From its start, La Casa has provided an incubator space where progressive political organizations could congregate; school-age kids could learn to box, dance, or repair their own bikes; and South Coast residents could see bands — like Los Lobos and X — play in a setting that was intimate, cavernous, and astonishingly affordable. Typically, about 3,000 people visit La Casa a month, but during Santa Barbara’s recent disasters, the numbers hit 10,000, as La Casa offered much needed daycare space for families when local schools shut down. Although La Casa has always been all about “La Raza” — reflecting its origins in the Brown Pride movement of the late 1960s — the thrust of the organization has also been ethnically ecumenical and emphatically multicultural. Or as Gonzales put it, “It’s been a place where kids of all colors could get hot and sweaty together, dancing as one.”
For any sale of the property to go through, however, a bankruptcy court judge must first approve the appointment of commercial realtor Mark Mattingly to handle the deal. That, it turns out, may not be nearly as simple as it sounds, given the operatic intensity of the bad blood boiling between one of La Casa’s original founders, Tomas Castelo, and La Casa’s current board and management. Castelo was not just La Casa’s first president; he currently owns La Casa’s mortgage, having bought it two years ago when the troubled community center was facing foreclosure. That marked the second time in four years that Castelo saved La Casa from the threat of imminent foreclosure. Today, La Casa owes Castelo nearly $850,000.
