Kylie Balk-Yaatenen July 14, 2023
JANESVILLE
Just past the Monterey Park sign and over the bridge on South Jackson Street stretch four abutting vacant city lots marked by an empty concrete semi-circle.
Formerly the foundation for batting cages, the concrete pad now appears to hold a makeshift skate park set up by neighborhood kids.
This is the proposed site of an $11 million new Boys & Girls Club of Janesville.
Across the street is a grassy field that the club is eyeing for a green space play area.
The city of Janesville owns the property on both sides of the street. The Boys & Girls Club is currently negotiating with the city, in hopes of all the property being donated to it.
The $11 million would include construction costs, furniture, equipment, and an endowment to support the operation costs.
Boys & Girls Club CEO Rebecca Veium said the club hopes to be in the new building by June 2025.
Bill Kennedy, chair of the project’s campaign committee, said the committee is almost ready to launch the public phase of the campaign. It has received some contributions and fundraising efforts have been started. Renderings and plans have been drawn up by an architect, Angus Young. A general contractor has yet to be identified; the club is trying to find someone local.
Veium said the location choice was deliberate, based on who the organization serves. She and campaign committee members talked a lot about the location, knowing if they picked wrong club kids would not come.
“We wanted to be close to the families we’re currently serving and those that are needing us most,” Veium said.
Veium said an aim was also to be on a bus line and for the site to be big enough for the building that’s proposed. Access to green space was also part of the plan.
Kennedy said in an interview this week with The Gazette that the site has sat empty for about 15 years. He said the area used to be a thriving part of town with the General Motors plant and other companies surrounding it.
While still in negotiations with the city, Kennedy said he and the committee are “very confident” that the site will be the new location for the club.
“The city is working on a lot of different developments for the south side but I think this could be a cornerstone of the south side,” he said. “I mean, helping kids become better people kind of sells itself.”
He said during the planning process the club identified one other site but there was a building that would need to be torn down. The cost of that didn’t fit the budget, he said.
“This site just made sense because it was empty and waiting to be filled,” Kennedy said.
The Boys & Girls Club currently shares a building with the YMCA at 200 West Court Street. It started planning a capital and endowment campaign last spring. Veium said a first step was completing a feasibility study. In May, she said the club entered the quiet phase of the campaign.
“Now, we’re kind of at the point now where a lot of those pieces have come into place. So, we are now starting to do the fundraising portion,” she told a Gazette reporter in May.
Veium said that club currently can only have up to 70 youth a day on site but consistently has over 100 kids on its waiting list. A room for teens in grades 6-12 can only accommodate 15 youth comfortably.
Veium said the proposed new building would be over 30,000 square feet, almost three times the size of the current building. The new building would accommodate 100 or more teens and students at a time.
Without a new building, “that’s 100 kids that won’t have access to the learning help, child care and other services that the club provides, and that’s not okay,” Veium said.
Veim said the new building would have space to accommodate programming such as homework help, literacy help and art all in separate rooms.
“And when you have kids trying to listen and get help with homework, and they’re all competing sound wise over each other, we just can’t be as effective with our programming,” now she said.
The club has identified that teens are often deterred from going to the club because they don’t have their own space.
In the new building, teens would have a second floor just for them. The planned teen programming included a commercial test kitchen to make food for youth and also allow youth to learn cooking skills.
The test kitchen would also be able to facilitate more than just snacks and would stay open later for kids who need a meal.
“Our kids are hungry, they often ask to take food home,” she said. “We will be able to stay open later and provide a full dinner to our kids before they go home.”
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