"Building A Place to Belong": Boys and Girls Club Breaking Ground on Major Expansion
The project will allow about twice as many Transylvania County children to participate in programs that build confidence, improve academics and promote physical and emotional health.
BREVARD — Jessica Ramirez is the art director at Cindy Platt Boys & Girls Club of Transylvania County, which also makes her an expert on the expanded horizons of children.
They often arrive as small kids “loving just one thing,” such as football or soccer, she said.
“Then they come into the art room and I give them skills and they make something so amazing. I say, ‘I love what you did, and do you love what you did?’ And they say, ‘I do love it, I’m going to take it home and put it on my wall,’ ” she said.
“That’s a really cool thing. It really is.”
And before long, it should be happening to roughly twice as many boys and girls in Transylvania County.
At 5:30 pm on Wednesday, the Club at Gallimore Road and Greenville Highway will break ground on a $7.5-million project that, among other improvements, will nearly double the size of its clubhouse, allowing it to eliminate its waiting list and increase the number of elementary school children it serves from 150 to 300.
The rolls of older children are also set to grow with the Club’s purchase, in January of this year, of the nearby former sanctuary of Destiny Church.
This gave middle and high school members their first permanent home since 2017 and will provide space for their numbers to triple — at least in the long run — from about 50 to as many as 150, said the Club’s executive director, Sarah St. Marie.
“That piece is going to take some time,” she said.
The projected growth of the Club should be welcome news not only to parents looking for summer and after-school enrichment, but to anyone discouraged about recent, prevailing narratives about children and adolescents: increasing immersion in online diversions, soaring rates of anxiety and depression.
Such concerns were listed in a 2022 letter of support for the Club’s expansion from Transylvania County Public Health Director Elaine Russell, who also listed a long of ways the Club can address them.
The organization “has and can continue to play an increasingly important role in addressing the identified needs for community spaces and programming that will support physical and emotional well-being,” Russell wrote.
For example, during a tour of the current facility two weeks ago, St. Marie walked through a class of children concentrating on art projects and past a playground filled with children running, climbing and swinging on swings.
A visit to the club’s website revealed many more programs designed to build physical fitness and athletic skills, artistic expression, emotional growth and academic success. Thanks in part to supervised homework sessions and supplemental tutoring provided by volunteers, an impressive 74 percent of the club’s members were named to their schools’ A-B Honor Roll.
While participating in these activities, children bond with other members from a range of backgrounds and every corner of the county, St. Marie said, a counterweight to another disheartening trend, polarization.
“We really love blending our kids and breaking down whatever barriers there might be in the community,” St. Marie said.
Along the way, they are guided by mentors they learn to love and trust over time.
“You think about schools, and you might have a favorite teacher but you only have them for a year,” St. Marie said. “Here the hope is that you see and are around your favorite staff member for a number of years and they support you for a critical part of your childhood journey.”
Hence the name of the expansion project: “Building a Place to Belong.”
The Plan
The original plan, announced in early 2022, called for starting with the creation of a new teen center by expanding a former sports store on a .7 acre property adjacent to the club. That phase has been put on hold because the acquisition of the Destiny building has eliminated the immediate need for a space for older children, St. Marie said.
Facilities for that age group are still in line for upgrades, she said, but the Club’s board of directors hasn’t decided what form they will take.
That leaves the initial focus on the renovation and 5,100-square-foot expansion of the clubhouse, a one-time doctor’s office shaped in a “super-funky hexagon,” St. Marie said.
The club has raised $4.5 million from major donors and, while starting to seek contributions from the public, is ready to embark on a project that will add six classrooms — meaning two rather than one for each elementary age group.
Outside the clubhouse, St. Marie pointed to the pitted gravel parking lot, which will be expanded, repaved and reconfigured to provide additional space and a pickup and drop-off line for buses and cars.
Fencing will add security and prevent residents from occupying parking spaces at the Club while they walk their dogs at a neighboring grassy former air strip.
The small wooden playground will be replaced with a large array of modern swings, slides and climbing bars, its mulch bed with a synthetic permeable surface. The plans also call for building a new outdoor basketball court and sports field.
Take Care of “My Baby”
All this outward growth, expected to be completed in the next 18 months, will really just be an extension of an internal expansion that has been going on for years.
Its annual budget has grown in the past five years from about $1 million to about $1.5 million, St. Marie said, allowing it to add opportunities available to children from families with a range of financial resources.
The club’s annual fee, $300 per child, make up only a small percentage of its annual budget — most of which is funded by donations — and full or partial scholarships are available to make sure no child is turned away because of finances, St. Marie said.
The club also pays some or all registration fees for the teams in the sports leagues it sponsors and covers many other costs, such as entrance fees to attractions it visits on field trips.
Even the full price is a bargain, considering the access it grants to expanded programs such as the Harvest Project and Club garden, which recently received a dedicated $20,000 donation and can boast that one of its main advocates, the Club’s assistant executive director, Jamie Atkinson, received a National Boys & Girls Club leadership award in 2022.
In 2021, the Club adopted an “evidence-based (tutoring) program used in the schools during our summer academic program,” St. Marie wrote in an email, which helped cement its valued role supplementing the work of local schools.
“The Club provides a safe and supportive environment for students to work on homework, receive mentorship from positive adult role models, and opportunities to make new friends beyond those in their school buildings,” Amanda Lewis, principal of Pisgah Forest Elementary School, wrote in an email.
“We recognize the importance of this partnership and are grateful to the Boys & Girls Club as they support our students.”
Its arts budget has increased more than tenfold since Ramirez’s arrival in 2016, she said, and now offers programs ranging from ukulele lessons to off-campus dance classes.
The club’s youth sports teams include a high-profile flag football program led by Devon Holmes, the Club’s Teen Services Director, who in 2020 was named National Coach of the Year by a partner organization of Boys & Girls Club of America.
The team’s budget has recently grown to $12,500 and it has traveled to cities throughout the Southeast, as well as to Las Vegas and Washington DC, providing players with exposure to cities “they might not even think of going to until they are adults,” he said.
Holmes, who started working at the club shortly after playing his last football season at Brevard College, says that, yes, he has passed on a lot of knowledge about sports.
“But I’m also trying to teach them life skills beyond football,” Holmes said, skills that are especially crucial to the players in need of positive influences.
“One mother, just before she was incarcerated, texted me, ‘Just please try to keep my baby in high spirits,’ ” he said.
Evidence that he’s “having a direct and daily impact on youth,” he said, is the reason he has stayed at the Club for nearly a decade.
“You can see it,” he said, of the difference he’s making. “It’s rewarding.”
That’s not to say developing athletic ability is unimportant, said Ramirez, who talked about one other child whose horizons have been expanded at the club, her own daughter, Mariah Worley, 15.
Worley was a “very shy” third grader when she started attending the Club, her mother said. Her growth there began with the skills and self-assurance she gained as she started to excel on Club-sponsored softball and volleyball teams.
Worley branched out into other activities, served as the president of a Boys & Girls’ middle school leadership program, and in 2022 was named the Club’s “Youth of the Year.”
“She has just exploded with such confidence and great, great speaking skills that I never knew were in her,” Ramirez said, “and I think that was definitely due to the Club.”
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What a great news story. It’s heartening to hear the stories of young folks being offered opportunities that enrich their lives and expand their horizons.
Very inspiring article.