Community Brainstorms for Centennial Celebration

Over 100 people came out Monday night to attend a brainstorming meeting for the San Marino Centennial celebration, which kicks off on July 4, 2012. The city will commemorate the Centennial in different ways through 2013, when San Marino turns 100 years old, using the $250,000 set aside for the Centennial--$10,000 of the city's general fund each year since the city's 75th anniversary.

“We had several meetings already but this is the one that was really open to all the San Marino residents,” said San Marino City Councilman Richard Sun, a member of the San Marino Centennial Steering Committee.

The meeting, which was held at the San Marino Center, wasn’t a stereotypical meeting comprised of rows of chairs faced at a lectern where one person spoke at a time, but involved about a dozen round tables with different color balloons.

People of all ages in the community sat at the tables, which each had a facilitator with a designated centennial topic for the table to brainstorm. Then, after ten minutes, each moderator rotated to get a different table to brainstorm on that topic.

“I think it went very well,” said John Morris, President of the San Marino Historical Society, which commissioned a . “It was great to get so many ideas from so many parts of the community. There’s so many things that we have to celebrate and I look forward to being part of it.”

Centennial topics included merchandise and promotional items like plates or a home address sign with a Centennial logo; historical reflections like a San Marino historical home tour; city gift like a statue or fountain; youth events like an essay contest about San Marino; cultural events and the arts, such as a black tie banquet or outdoor movie night; and community and organization events like a Centennial parade or even a type of rose created just for the Centennial.

“We had a couple high schoolers at our table and it was interesting to hear their ideas of what they would like to see and then we had the older generation and what they wanted to see,” said Sally Fadley, Carver Elementary PTA President. “The older generation said, ‘Let’s have a ball’ and the high schoolers said, ‘Let’s have a backpack with all kinds of logo stuff on it.’ So there was a little bit of everything.”

At the end of each 10-minute brainstorm, tables chose their top three ideas for that topic and submitted their lists, which were then compiled and written on large pads of paper displayed on stage.

At a couple points during the evening, San Marino Police Chief John Schaeffer encouraged everyone to get out of their seats to stretch, which involved dancing to “YMCA” and the “Macarena”.

“I had zero expectations,” said Jeff Fadley, who brainstormed and favored ideas that didn’t include commemorative “chotchkis”. “It was actually really fun. What amazed me was the depth and breadth. The hardest part is going to be sifting through some of these things and saying, ‘What can we accomplish?’”

After every table brainstormed about each topic, the moderators for each topic presented the giant notepads on stage and read aloud the top three ideas that came from each table.

Some ideas that got a lot of cheers were displaying a genuine, old “red car”, or electric rail car, somewhere in town and San Marino having a float in the Tournament of Roses parade. 

Centennial meeting participants also filled out cards with their contact information and what Centennial categories they would be interested in volunteering with in the future.

“The next step is we are going to compile a list for each category, send those lists to thirty organizations—schools and churches,” said Liz Kneier, Chair of the San Marino Centennial Oversight Committee. “In May we hope they will send a proposal form back to us with their ideas and we will formulate the calendar. From the papers that I collected from individuals tonight, I will see who is interested and get them involved too. We’re just taking it one step at a time.”