The Riford Center on La Jolla Boulevard is trying to reposition itself as a community center for active adults, but plans to host weddings and parties onsite and to relocate the entrance to a residential street have irked neighbors. Bonair Street residents hashed out their concerns with the Riford Center’s board of directors in a meeting on March 16. The neighbors want to be more involved with the planning process for making changes to The Riford Center and to the gateway from their neighborhood onto the boulevard. Neighbors floated ideas of turning the triangular, concrete median in front of the center into a park, and even closing off Tyrian Street. “Maybe we can do something to slow down traffic so this whole area starts to thrive instead of it just having a highway going by,” said David Singer, who lives on Bonair Street. The group decided to begin the process of creating a master plan for the area starting with a discussion on March 30. The idea is to give everyone a chance to study the needs of The Riford Center, the neighborhood and the boulevard, and for people to air their ideas in a charette process similar to the one Bird Rock undertook to beautify its portion of La Jolla Boulevard. “We can focus on this specific area [of The Riford Center] but within the context of a master plan,” Singer said. The board of directors’ willingness to accommodate the neighbors’ concerns doesn’t change two facts: The Riford Center needs to generate more activity to stay economically-viable and the neighbors are worried about the increased traffic. Local Kiwanians and Rotarians formed the Friends of the Riford Center nonprofit organization in 2007 to assume leadership of the city-owned building after the last lessee, LiveWell, pulled out. Florence Riford deeded the building to the city in the 1970s to use as a community center for seniors, but the endowment has nearly run out. The board of directors has plans to build a new ADA-compliant entrance either on the front or on the residential side of the building, since it received a Community Development Block Grant for $207,000 for the entrance. The center also has preliminary plans to create six parking spaces and three handicap parking spaces in front of the building.