Educational hub going up in Sunol next to water temple

10,000-square-foot center to open in 2022

SUNOL >> After years of planning and work to preserve indigenous artifacts, construction of the Alameda Creek Watershed Center in Sunol is underway, according to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.

The utilities commission, which is heading the project, said in a statement Friday that the Watershed Center is envisioned as an educational hub for raising “awareness of the natural and cultural history of the Alameda Creek Watershed and the Hetch Hetchy Regional Water System.”

The $27 million, 10,000-square-foot center is being built next to the Sunol Water Temple, near the historic confluence of two creeks, Alameda Creek and the Arroyo de la Laguna, part of the ancestral home of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe.

The idea of an educational center there has been tossed around for nearly 20 years, but planning began in earnest within the last decade. The center is expected to be completed by March 2022, according to utilities commission spokesman Will Reisman.

The commission is a department of San Francisco government, which owns about 38,000 acres of the Alameda Creek Watershed in Alameda and Santa Clara counties, which contain two reservoirs that help drinking supply water to nearly 3 million people in the region.

The commission and the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe have been working together since 2014 to locate, study and preserve archaeological finds from the Watershed Center area. Replicas of some of the more than 13,000 artifacts that have been found will be incorporated into the center’s exhibits and programs, the commission said.

“It is in this spirit of mutual cooperation and respect that the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe looks forward to the completion of this significant educational endeavor at our ancestral heritage site,” Muwekma Ohlone Tribal Vice Chairwoman Monica V. Arellano said in the statement.

Arellano said Tribal leadership has named the site, “Síi Túupentak,” meaning “Place of the Water Round House Site.”

The center will explore the “interaction of people and nature and the significance of water in sustaining both,” the commission said. It’ll have indoor and outdoor features, including an exhibit hall with an 8,000-gallon stream profile aquarium, as well as areas where visitors can see water flow underneath their feet.

There will also be a watershed discovery lab to host school programs, a community room, “semiimmersive history alcoves,” and a restored picnic area along the creek.