STEVENS POINT, Wis. (WSAU) -- The Boy’s and Girl’s Club will be moving to a new location in Stevens Point. The Stevens Point City Council gave its approval to the club using much of the Parks and Recreation building, which is just north of P.J. Jacobs Junior High and next to Gehrke Park, which is home to athletic fields, the Copps Pool, and the Willett Ice Arena.
Kenin Quevillon with the Boy’s & Girl’s Club says they can now focus on fundraising. “We have to assess the fundraising, I mean, that’s kind of the next step for us. You know, we have to determine our budget. I think we have a design set now. We hope to launch our fundraising here soon, and then our goal is to break ground in March or April and be open in time for the school year.”
Quevillon says unlike the present downtown teen center, the new facility will be the city’s first full service Boy’s & Girl’s Club. “In the meeting, it was mentioned it was for teens only. It’s really grades first through 12th, and the teens would have a separate space within the building.”
Boy’s & Girl’s Club Board President Wayne Semmerling Jr. says the location is perfect, and the additional space will allow them to do much more. “There’s a lot of positives to this location. That’s the key. We really feel being near the center of the city, some bus lines, location is great, and finally, we can fully serve all of the young students there, not just a teen center, but a full Boys and Girls Club.”Semmerling adds, “Well, the space is going to be number one. It’s a much larger space. There’s going to be a lot more programming that we’re able to do. There’s also going to be some opportunity, hopefully, to provide some cooking services throughout, if we get what we want to, a large enough kitchen where we can do a lot of cooking for all of the satellite sites we have out and about as well.”
Supporter Beverly West says the Boy’s & Girl’s Club will eventually offer some basic health services for the children along with the other activities. “We do plan to have an area where we’ll have dental checkups and health checkups for children. Many of these young children do not have the privilege of going to a doctor regularly, so we’ll have professionals there.”
West says the tutoring program will expand and the new site accommodates all grades, not just teens. “In all of the sites, the teachers at these schools say that students are doing so much better because we offer this tutoring program. They’re better in their academic work, and of course we all know that if a student is doing better academically, he’s also doing better in his discipline.”
The new location will be the main site for the county, and will also offer services to satellite Boy’s & Girl’s Club locations in Plover, Junction City, Almond-Bancroft, plus the Jefferson and Madison school locations.