FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Youths Have High Hopes for Club

For members of the Boys and Girls Club, it’s the little things they’re looking forward to when their new, 19,000-square-foot club is built.

They can’t wait to have a bathroom inside the building, a soda machine that works, refreshments like frozen drinks and popcorn, a playground with equipment and an indoor basketball court.

Matt Oden said he’s excited because the new club will have video games and a study room “so you can have some peace and quiet.” He said he hopes to make new friends since membership is expected to double.

“This one’s getting too many people, and it’s getting overcrowded,” the 12-year-old said. “And it’s old.”

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley, Fountain Valley chapter, now operates out of a 3,500-square-foot building at the vacant Arthur D. Nieblas School.

The new club will not only be bigger, it will offer Fountain Valley youth more activities. The clubhouse will boast a high school-size gymnasium with basketball courts and a theater stage.

There will be a teen center--a separate hangout for youth ages 13 and older--a computer center, library, community meeting room, counseling room, a kitchen, an arts and crafts area and photography lab.

“It’s not much to look at yet,” Chris Schneider, executive director, said recently as construction crews began grading the two-acre site next to Fountain Valley Recreation Center at Mile Square Park.

Schneider said the $1.3-million club now under construction off Brookhurst Street is expected to be completed by June--in time for the club’s summer programs.

Schneider said the city has leased the site to the club for 35 years at no cost.

“It’s just really exciting for the community, “ said Bob Hoxsie, club president. “It’s really needed in this society because the kids will have a place where they can come after school and have adults work with them.”

Last September, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley opened a new $1.5-million, 18,000-square-foot club at Huntington Beach’s McCallen Park. Schneider said the Fountain Valley club will be similar in size, services and programs offered.

The Fountain Valley club started in 1967 in a 2,000-square-foot building behind the former site of the Fountain Valley Drive-In. But when the property was sold 16 years later, the club had no home.

From 1983 to 1986, Schneider operated the club out of a van, visiting campuses and offering after-school activities.

“We’ve never really had a true home or true facility,” he said.

For the past six years, the club has rented the former school building. And the makeshift club is small, cramped and not conducive to offering a variety of recreational activities, Schneider said.

“The need for services are there, but we can’t accommodate all the kids because of the size and layout of the building,” he said.

The fund-raising drive for a new club building began five years ago. To date, the club has raised about $600,000 and has pledges totaling about $300,000.

The club boasts a membership of about 400 youths, ages 6 to 17. The club, with an annual membership fee of $10, averages 85 students a day during the school year.

Schneider said the new club will be able to serve about 220 youngsters a day. Sixty-eight percent of the club’s members come from single-parent families, with 13% coming from families in which both parents work, Schneider said.

“That leaves them in a latchkey situation, with no one to come home to,” he said.