Tag: location

Meeting Date and Venue Changes!

February 27, 2020

The March regular board meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 12, 2020 at 7pm at the Avondale Civic Center.

It’s hard to find a meeting location that is affordable, reasonably close by, available year-round, and with adequate facilities. The meeting location we’ve used for the past year significantly raised their rates once we changed management companies, and the accommodations were often noisy and accompanied by problems with building access. We met for a long time at nearby schools, but they’re closed (or difficult to get access to) in the summer and we often had problems getting the rooms unlocked.

So, starting with the March 2020 meeting, we’re going back to the Avondale Civic Center located at 11465 Civic Center Drive in Avondale, along Avondale Blvd just south of I-10. Their rooms are spacious, easy to set up, generally have overhead projectors and WiFi availability, good bathroom facilities, and a guard who ensures we have access and provides a level of facility security we don’t have at other venues.

Almost as hard as finding a place, is finding a date where all of the five board members are able to attend. People are busy! To help us maximize board participation, we might shake it up a bit and meet in different weeks of the month, but it’s shaping up that Thursdays are more available for most of us. That’s why you’ll see the March meeting is the second Thursday of the month.

See this page for more information about the meeting location and other details.

New Board Meeting Venue

February 23, 2019

We have selected a new meeting venue – and it starts next week! From our web’s Board and Committee Meeting page:

Meetings are now held at the Pine Valley Community Center near Litchfield Road and Palm Valley Blvd.  Drive south on Litchfield Road, turn right on Palm Valley Blvd.  Go west along Pine Valley for about half a mile; the community center is on your left (south side of Palm Valley Blvd).  The facility isn’t that large, so come in the front door and look for signs.

From the Board and Committee Meetings page

Address

There’s a caveat to the address: Some GPS systems have reportedly given a route to the Palm Valley Blvd intersection with McDowell Road. This is incorrect!

Go to the intersection of Palm Valley and Litchfield, and turn to the west. The community center is about half a mile, on the left/south side of the street.

Palm Valley Community Center
14145 W Palm Valley Blvd
Goodyear, AZ 85395

Here is a PDF route map from Rio Crossing to Palm Valley Community Center.

History of Meeting Venues

We met at the Barbara Robey Elementary School for some time. Unfortunately, we had numerous issues of trying to schedule around school closures and working around their special events, not to mention that they frequently failed to unlock entry access to the courtyard to facilitate people getting to the meeting.

We have, on a couple of occasions, even met at the deli patio at the local Basha’s store.

The Mojave Room at the City of Avondale’s Civic Center was a nice facility, and while not unreasonably far, it was a 12-15 minute drive. The other main issue was the cost, since the city charges a premium rate for night meetings.

We had one meeting at the Estrella Mountain Community College campus, but parking was definitely an issue, and the facility, while “nice enough” once we got in, had issues with security access problems, and lack of cell and/or WiFi coverage.