SIMI VALLEY : Bank Donates to Boys & Girls Club
A $50,000 donation Thursday from Simi Valley Bank will help pay for the construction of a new Boys & Girls Club that officials say will benefit the city’s youth for years to come.
“If you don’t support the kids, you’re going to have trouble in the future,” said bank President Tony Palmer moments after making what he called the largest charitable donation in the bank’s history.
With more and more Simi Valley parents entering the job market, Palmer said, the Boys & Girls Club’s after-school and summer programs give much-needed adult attention and guidance to the city’s latchkey kids.
Simi Valley Boys & Girls Club Director Linda White eyed the poster-board check for $50,000 with a grin, saying: “Oh, I like that number.”
The money will help repay a $1.5-million construction loan for the new building that the club got from the city in 1990. The club’s board of directors has raised more than $200,000 for the $3.3-million clubhouse, White said.
Membership at the Boys & Girls Club has doubled to 1,900 children in the past five years, straining facilities at the clubhouse in the former Bellwood School complex. And club officials predict that membership will double again within the first year of the new club’s opening.
“The exterior is almost complete, and they’re framing out the interior--and the doors are on,” White said.
Club officials hope to open the 25,000-square-foot building on a corner of Rancho Tapo Community Park by March or April, she said.
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