JANESVILLE After years of being forced by space considerations to turn away more than 100 children each year, the Boys & Girls Club of Janesville is preparing to open the doors of a new facility designed to help change the lives of youth in the community.
Cramped cubbies, a lack of program rooms and only a small space for teens rank as major difficulties for the nonprofit youth services agency. The current Boys & Girls Club was not working as the nonprofits impact continued to grow.
The new space has a locker for around 150 kids, program rooms, a kitchen, a separate teen lounge and a full gymnasium.
The $14 million facility on Janesvilles south side will welcome teens and elementary-age members later this month, Sept. 8, marking the culmination of a five-year capital campaign and monthslong construction project.
This week, the club unveiled the new facility to donors to thank them for what they did to help bring the building to the finish line.
Were celebrating you, the people that believed in our organization, Rebecca Veium, the CEO of the club, said at a donor event Tuesday night. You believed in our kids, and chose to keep us in their future.
At the event, many of the speakers brought up Bill Kennedy, a former board president who died a year before construction of the new clubhouse broke ground.
Board President Rachel Pregont Andres, campaign chair for the new Boys & Girls Club facility, recalled that Kennedy believed when it came to investing in children for the future, it was never a bad idea.
His brother Bob Kennedy said Bill served as a human catalyst to bringing the club to Janesville and then pushing to get a bigger facility in the first place.
Veium said the new facility is about more than just a bigger building, its about creating more opportunities to say yes to local families.
The Boys & Girls Club has previously had to turn families away when it reached capacity, sometimes leaving parents unsure of where they could find care for their children.
The new facility will allow the club to serve roughly three times as many kids while giving different age groups dedicated spaces to learn and grow.
It gives our elementary members dedicated space to learn, Veium said. It gives our teen members space thats designated just for them, where they begin thinking about their future.
The facility also expands what the club can provide for children during their time there. Part of the build was adding a commercial kitchen where they can provide not only snacks, but a dinner for kids every night before they go home. In the teen lounge, they also have a kitchen where teens will be able to learn how to cook food.
She said keeping the program affordable for families is a priority for the organization, with families paying just $20 a month for after-school care.
Although the building marks the completion of a major fundraising effort, Veium said the organization now faces the challenge of funding expanded operations needed to fill the clubhouse with programs and staff.
The building is not the finish line, she said. In many ways, it is just the beginning.
With the ability to serve more children, the club expects its annual operating budget to increase by $500,000 per year.
That does not mean something is wrong, she explained. Its because were doing more.
The club relies heavily on community support because the fees families pay cover only a small portion of overall operating costs.
The organization is now asking donors to continue that support as it moves into the next phase of its work.
Mark and Kathy Bush and Steve and Patty Schumacher are starting a matching campaign which allows the community to help staff fill new buildings with the programs, more staff and opportunities our kids deserve.
They will match all new gifts to the clubs operations budget up to $100,000.
This is not about replacing the support that made this building possible. Its about making sure that we can fill it with the programs, the staff and the opportunities that our kids deserve.
Veium said the ultimate measure of the new facility will be the children and families who are able to benefit from it.
The building is here, the doors are opening, and there are more kids waiting to walk through those doors.