PHOTOS: Community Beams With Pride At Ashland Youth Center 'Topping Out' Ceremony

After eight years of countless meetings and $25 million later, the Ashland Youth Center is one beam closer towards being completed.

Clark and Sullivan Construction hosted the facility's y to mark the last 30-foot iron beam to be set in place of the 

In attendance were dozens of people from the community including local students, policy makers, architects, school and law enforcement officials.

"If you were to drive by this place five years ago, it would have been completely different," said the center's Executive Director Pedro Naranjo. 

From developing a facility design and program services to forming an identity and finding the right public art to display, he said the center's idea-turned-reality has been a youth-adult partnership.

"The spirit of the collaboration has been very much alive and embedded in this project," Naranjo said.

Those involved with the project had which is an acronym for the areas it sets out to impact in the lives of kids in the community: recreation, education, art (and culture), careers and heath.

The center, which plans to serve youth ages 11 through 24, was built with the help of Hayward Area Recreation and Park District (HARD), the , , and input from the community.

It also forms a 12-acre community asset in the blighted Ashland neighborhood, being built next to the HARD's Jack Holland Sr. Park and at

Among the community supporters who attended the ceremony to speak were District 4 Supervisor Nate Miley, who had spearheaded and championed this project.

Miley expressed disappointment with the , especially since the agency helped fund this project. The day the center was signed off for construction, redevelopment was voted to be dissolved.

He then called up all the youth involved in the process of building the facility and making it a "youth campus."

"This wasn't my dream, this was their dream," he said. "Take care of it."

Located at 16335 E. 14th St., San Leandro, the 31,500 square foot, two-story youth center is slated to be open December of 2012 and is currently the largest youth center being built in the country.

If you missed the ceremony, scroll through the photos above.

For more information about the Reach Youth Center, visit http://ashlandyouthcenterproject.org/