LAKE STEVENS — At midnight on New Year’s Eve, when many people are ringing in the new year with champagne and kisses, local residents will be celebrating with keys.
Officials of Clubs Inc., which owns the Mitchell Community Center at 1609 E. Lakeshore Drive, will hand over the keys to the Snohomish County Boys &Girls Club. That will set in motion the culmination of a more-than-40-year dream to build a youth center in town.
Renovations estimated at $700,000 on the building are set to begin Jan. 15 to turn the building into the county’s 12th Boys &Girls Club. Within a year of completion, officials estimate the club will add 1,000 to 2,000 youngsters to the 13,000 already being served by the county’s 11 other clubs.
"It’s really one of the biggest things that’s happened to Lake Stevens in my lifetime," said Jim Mitchell, a Lake Stevens resident and a member of the family for whom the community center was named.
"It’s the biggest accomplishment that the community has been able to do, since it’s all been done voluntarily, not by bond issues and things.
"Money is still coming in. I just received $4,000 in checks last week," he said.
Supporters are hoping that by Jan. 15 enough additional money will arrive to allow the club to begin the second phase of construction at the same time as the initial remodeling. The second phase, estimated to cost about $500,000, will involve building a gym next to the 7,000-square-foot club.
So far, the community has raised about $800,000, said Bill Tsoukalas, executive director of Boys &Girls Clubs of Snohomish County. They’re hoping for approval of a grant that would allow the two phases to proceed as one.
"We’ll completely upgrade that building — roof, lights, floors, walls, heating. We’re just going to go out to the four walls and start over," Tsoukalas said.
Construction is expected to take about five months, unless the gym is built at the same time, which would extend the process about two months.
"The gym gives us the ability to provide the physical activities — volleyball, basketball and general low-organized games — for kids to work out energy after school," he said.
But gym construction won’t start until the organization has the money to build it, Tsoukalas said.
"We built the building in 1960 to be a youth center, and it never became a reality because there was no way to support it," Mitchell said.
About $6,000 was needed to put in a sewer line, and the taxes ran up to $3,000, he said. Clubs Inc., a combination of the Lake Stevens Lions Club and Junior Athletic Association, was incorporated to operate it, he said.
The New Year’s Eve party will be a farewell to the center’s old uses as a community meeting place and bingo hall, Tsoukalas said. The agency expects the new club to be open by September.
The club will have a games room, teen center, computer lab, arts and crafts room, and multi-purpose meeting room, with a small kitchen available to prepare snacks for kids.
Eventually, there could be a skateboard park, Tsoukalas said. The space has been dedicated if the community wants to build it, and some service club members are interested.
"It’s just good synergy there," he said. "Bond Field (used by the Little League) is already there.
"You just have the dynamics of the Little League field, the Boys &Girls Club, the skateboard park — kind of one-stop shopping for the kids, who can move between the three venues, depending on the weather and their interests."
The club will have a 30-year lease with a 10-year option to renew, for $1 per year.
The building actually began back in the 1920s, when a group of mothers wanted a place to take their children, Mitchell said. They formed a guild and built a small building.
"In 1960, we started a drive to build a youth center out of the existing facility, which was a little wooden building," Mitchell said.
Spearheaded by the Lions, the community raised enough money and materials to construct the Mitchell Center, using donated materials and volunteer labor, for about $10,000, he said.
Reporter Cathy Logg: 425-339-3437 or logg@heraldnet.com.
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