MOORPARK : Club Will Move to Vacant School

The Moorpark Boys and Girls Club has plans to move from a one-room trailer to new, larger headquarters at an abandoned high school in downtown Moorpark using city money and donations from the community.

The club, which has purchased a portion of the old Casey Road high school site for $579,350, will expand its programming to include counseling programs, cultural events and eventually sports for girls, club director Dominick Lee said.

The club’s current trailer site at Chaparral Middle School restricts the diversity of programs that club directors can offer at one time.

“When we try to have kids doing homework in here, it’s really distracting,” Lee said. “On one end you have kids clicking pool balls and on another a kid’s doing homework and it just doesn’t work.”

This new “facility gives us an advantage to reach out to more kids and offer a different variety of programs at one time,” he said.

At the new site, club members will get a gym and tennis courts. Adjacent locker rooms will be converted into game rooms and a library.

The club, which opens after school on weekdays until 8 p.m., serves nearly 950 children from ages 6 to 18 for a membership of $3 a year. When the club moves to its new facility in May membership will increase to $5.

So far, the club has raised $38,500 in donations. Combined with the city’s $50,000 grant, $100,000 loan and an upcoming fund-raising campaign, officials hope to pay for the new club headquarters in eight years, said John Newton, chairman of the club’s financial development committee.