A new Buddhist Community Center is slated to replace a former 24-Hour fitness facility on Lawrence Avenue in Sunnyvale.
Buddhist Americans make up 1% of the nation’s population as of 2020, according to national data. They are primarily concentrated in Hawaii, but also in California including in San Francisco, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.
Buddhist places of worship have sprouted throughout the South Bay in recent years. In 2023, the San Jose City Council approved a $25 million project to build the largest Buddhist temple in the region for ethnic Cambodians after a four-year-long deliberation. That temple will open in San Jose’s Evergreen neighborhood in the upcoming years.
And last fall, Bay Area residents welcomed the grand opening of the Tâm Từ Metta Vietnamese Buddhist temple on the southern edge of Morgan Hill.
In Sunnyvale, the 24-hour fitness center closed down in March 2023 and remained vacant for two years, according to city documents. The area, which is located at 1211 East Arques Avenue on the corner of Arques Avenue and Lawrence Expressway, is surrounded by various commercial and industrial buildings. To the north of the site are multi-family residential homes as well as the busy U.S. Highway 101.
Since 2003, Soka Gakkai International, a global Buddhist organization, has operated a branch in nearby Santa Clara. The space is more than three times smaller than the Arques Avenue location they hope to move to in the upcoming months. Its members said they are hoping to use the Sunnyvale building to host larger religious services and activities including group prayers, study sessions, faith dialogues and youth development activities.
The center is planning to open daily, and will primarily be used on the weekends and evening hours during the weekday for group meetings. The sanctuary room will be the center’s main attraction and is expected to bring in around 175 to 250 people on the first Sunday of the month, when the largest meetings are scheduled to take place.
In a letter to city staff, the organization states that noise from center activities will not impact the surrounding area, which also includes several small businesses.
“None of the activities held within the facility create any significant noise levels or noise that could be heard beyond the facility,” the organization said. Most activities create noise levels equal to what occurs in a typical office setting with small group meetings or gatherings.”
The facility’s existing parking lot will be redesigned to hold 93 parking spaces, including 89 standard spaces and four accessible spaces.
The proposed location is down the street from an established Buddhist temple, the Chung Tai Zen Center of Sunnyvale.
