Youth Club May Get Bigger, Better Home

The Boys and Girls Club of Capistrano Valley may soon have a new home.

The City Council this week approved in concept a proposal to include a youth services facility at the new San Juan Capistrano Community Center.

The club would build an 11,000-square-foot youth facility and would raise $1.5 million for the project.

It would be part of the community center, which is to have a gymnasium, senior center, lobby and community room.

“I’m real enthusiastic and optimistic,” said Jim Williams, the executive director of the Boys and Girls Club.

For the past two years, the club has been operating out of a 2,500-square-foot facility at the Capistrano Unified School District’s continuation high school.

However, the site is too small for the growing membership that the club anticipates and does not have adequate recreation or gymnasium facilities, Williams said.

A permanent youth center would raise the organization’s visibility, be more centrally located and thus attract more children to the club, Williams said.

“We’ll be able to reach all the kids in the community,” Williams said. “Right now we’re a neighborhood club.”

Construction for the first phase of the community center is set to start in August.