oct-2017

248 249 UNION CITY, CALIFORNIA food product manufacturers, to major healthcare providers, to industrial and shipping companies. It is also a wonderful place to live. Its approximate- ly 18 square miles provides a variety of housing - ranging from affordable to upscale–across a number of charming city neighborhoods, all with access to parks, sports fields, and other community facilities. Business ViewMagazine has featured this vi- brant city in its pages twice before–once in 2015, and again in 2016.We recently caught up with several Union City officials for an update on some of its ongoing projects and programs: “We are currently under construction on a $4 million expansion of our teen center,” reports City Engineer,Thomas Ruark.“We are about 50 percent done and we hope to complete the project in time for NewYears.”This conversion project involves transforming the Kennedy Community Center into a home for the city’s teenage population. It in- cludes original works of art, designed by the teens, themselves, under the auspices of the illuminaries, a local group of visual artists, famous for the many Golden State Warriors basketball teammurals they have designed and placed around the East Bay. “The illuminaries just presented their initial concept art based on some previous workshops that they did with our teen communitymembers,” adds Digital Marketing Specialist, Lauren Burch. “They gave the teens another chance to practice their own spray-painting skills.That was a great event and they showed us what it will look like to have some really huge murals inside and outside the center; it’s going to be very public art and the teens will really feel as if they have ownership of it because they’ve been part of it.” Ruark says that the city also completed the second part of its Decoto Green Streets project, which is multi-million dollar program in the