Boys & Girls site coming to Heights

The newest Boys & Girls clubhouse is under construction in the Vancouver Heights neighborhood and slated to open in March. Smack in the middle of the 20-acre Skyline Crest housing development, the clubhouse will be the first project erected as part of the area’s overall renewal plan.

The site for the 13,900-square-foot Heights O.K. 2 Clubhouse is near the Andresen Road entrance to the neighborhood.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Southwest Washington celebrated a successful $4.5 million capital campaign last week with a barbecue held at the playground next to the construction site.

The “O.K.” in the name refers to two major donor couples, Steve and Jan Oliva and Lee and Connie Kearney, who have sponsored other clubhouses.

Steve Oliva noted that some children who attended the first clubhouse in Hazel Dell are now staff members, showing how the low-cost after-school programming can come full circle.

Vancouver Heights was determined to be an under-served area with no nearby affordable youth programming, said Gwen McNeir, grants and outcomes manager for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Southwest Washington. There are about 1,000 children within a 1-mile radius of Skyline Crest, and the area has a high rate of poverty, she said. At Skyline Crest, a subsidized housing complex, the per capita income is around $21,000.

“We’ve expanded based on need,” McNeir said.

The Boys & Girls Clubs first came to Clark County in 2000. There’s the Hazel Dell clubhouse, called the Clinton & Gloria Clubhouse, the O.K. Clubhouse off Plomondon Street in the Bagley Downs neighborhood, and the programs at Washington and Fruit Valley elementary schools.

The organization predicts Heights O.K. 2 will serve around 150 to 160 children per day, with about 600 children enrolled. Staff can walk students from nearby Marshall Elementary School over to the clubhouse for after-school activities. The gym, game room, education room, teaching kitchen, art studio and technology center will help facilitate a variety of activities. Children can get homework help, enjoy snacks and generally stay active and supervised after school. On average, families pay about $30 per child, though the actual yearly cost is around $700.

The Vancouver Housing Authority contributed $1.5 million to the clubhouse’s construction and offered to lease the property at a nominal $1 per year, making this the first major collaboration between VHA and the Boys & Girls Clubs.

More projects coming

Besides the clubhouse, other projects at Skyline Crest will be rolled out on a staggered schedule.

The clubhouse will share a wall with the 8,500-square-foot Bridgeview Employment and Resource Center. Construction on the community center will start around February or March, when the clubhouse is being finished up, said Steve Towell, community relations program manager at VHA.

When the community center is completed, the Rise & Stars Community Center that it’s replacing — the tan building at 500 Omaha Way — can be demolished to make way for Caples Terrace. That three-story building will include 25 residential units: single-bedroom and studio apartments, as well as two-bedroom units.

Also, later this month, VHA plans to begin renovating the 138 units in Skyline Crest’s duplexes and quadplexes. Upgrades include new exterior siding, exterior and interior doors, vinyl floors that look like hardwood, plywood pantry shelving and bathroom countertops with built-in sinks.

They’ll do a handful of units at a time, with the whole project taking about two years, Towell said.

So, it’ll be a while before every piece is complete at Skyline Crest. Rejuvenating the development and building a Boys & Girls Club carries the long-term goal of changing the lives of the children who live there; through early intervention, they may not grow up to be adults who need subsidized housing.