Group ready to open at Phoenix Middle School in October
By Vicky Wedig
Editor
The Boys & Girls Club of Walworth County confirmed May 2 that it will locate at Phoenix Middle School.
“We’re very excited,” said Judy Mueller, chairman of the Boys & Girls Club’s advisory committee.
The organization has raised $190,000 and has another $10,000 pledged – enough to open its doors and operate in a donated location for 1 ½ years, Mueller said.
Mueller said Phoenix Principal Mark Weerts has been very helpful in facilitating the location of the club there. The club will open in two classrooms in Phoenix Middle School in early October. Members plan to tour the space in a couple of weeks.
Ashley Contreras, who began the effort to locate a club in Delavan, said the Phoenix location was the club’s goal because middle school students are at a vulnerable age at which kids begin “slipping through the cracks.”
“That’s really the target age group that we’re looking at,” she said.
The organization is seeking applications for the club’s unit director. Interested people can apply on the club’s website at www.bgcwalco.org under careers.
“Our goal is to have a unit director in place by the first part of July,” Mueller said.
Students will be able to sign up for the Boys & Girls Club during school registration, Mueller said.
Contreras began work to establish a club in 2009 and organizers have been raising funds and gathering data required by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America since then. Though the group has met its initial goal, the work won’t stop there, Contreras said.
“We’re still a little bit in limbo. We have raised enough to open our doors,” she said. “We’re always going to be fundraising. The last thing we want to do is open our doors and shut then a year and a half later because we run out of money.”
Once the club is established at Phoenix, the advisory council will likely wage a capital campaign later to establish its own facility, Mueller said.
Location possibilities that have been bandied about are the former Brad Liddle Safety Building at 230 S. Seventh St., the Delavan Parks Department maintenance building at 69 W. Walworth Ave. and the Community Action Inc. site at 1545 Hobbs Drive.
Mueller said cost estimates are $400,000 to renovate the old fire station into a Boys & Girls Club and $325,000 to refurbish the parks maintenance building for a club. She said the location of the parks building near the Mill Pond and Veterans Memorial Park is ideal from a programming standpoint.
Mueller said the club also could consider some partnerships such as sharing the building with the city to use as a senior center, for example, during the day and as a Boys & Girls Club after school.
