Life

Boys & Girls Club eyes big addition

By Bill Moss, Published: July 17, 2013

The Boys and Girls Club of Henderson County is looking at an expansion of its campus in Green Meadows to add a two-story building containing classrooms, a computer lab, offices and large multipurpose room.

In plans the club has filed with the city planning department, club officials seek permission to add a 9,600-square foot, two-story addition. Boys and Girls Club president David Adams said during a neighborhood planning review meeting that the club would need to raise money for the project if the city approves the zoning. Counting fundraising and construction, he said, it would be a year and a half to two years to finish the job.
Boys and Girls Club executive director Kevin Lauritsen said the club has not set a fundraising goal.
"It's really just an exploration, really just early formative stages," he said. "Probably six or seven years ago we kind of looked at building there and instead we did an expansion out the back of our property. We just need to find out if it makes sense with the city to put a two-story building there."
Lauritsen said the club would like to have more space for technology and a large assembly room but has not settled on details of what would go into a new building.
In 2008, the city approved the club's 14,000-square-foot expansion on Ashe Street at White Sparrow Drive.
The club now has three buildings with a total of 36,333 square feet on eight parcels of property. Most of the property is city-owned, and the club has a lease that runs until 2035. The city is "reviewing the possibility of turning over the parcels" owned by the city to the Boys and Girls Club so the pieces can be combined into a single parcel under one ownership, Planning Director Sue Anderson said in a report on the club's special use permit application.