With about twice the space of the old building, the main feature of the new Valparaiso Boys & Girls Club is the sheer number of activity options available to kids. The 36,000-square-foot facility opened May 31 at 708 Evans Ave. and may be the best kept secret around in after-school care.
“It’s just ages and ages ahead,” said board member and volunteer tutor Jim Brown, of Valparaiso. “It’s just such a beautiful building and there’s so much for them to do, especially in the STEM Room.” Aside from a recently awarded $150,000 American Rescue Plan Act grant, the $9 million facility was fully bankrolled over two years of fundraising.
For an annual fee of $40 kids in kindergarten through 12th grade have access to the club from 2:30 to 7 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 2:30 to 6 p.m. on Friday. An afternoon snack is provided. In only a few months since opening the club went from serving 40 kids a day at the old location to 122 at the new.
Transportation is available to the club after school from all Valparaiso Community Schools. Once they arrive, students can choose from a slew of dedicated rooms, from game rooms that focus on tactile activities like a giant pile of LEGOs, basketball hoops, and air hockey, to the Kindergarten Room designed by Tonn & Blank Construction that offers a Peddler’s Pizza Parlor, a play house, and a child-sized kitchen with solid-surface countertops that would make most parents envious.
“This is the first time all day they get to pick what they want to do,” said Valparaiso Club Director Maggie Beezhold. She said many of the kids the club serves start their day at 6:30 a.m. at one of 11 Kid Stop locations throughout Porter County that provide before-school care. She said the club takes great care in keeping in mind what a long day some kids have, and trying to make it special and enriching.
“When kids walk into this club for the first time, it’s kind of like being Santa,” Beezhold said of the club’s role. “We get to be the place that working families rely on and know they (their children) had a great day.”
That is made possible from the collective might of donations. Shire Kuch, vice president of finance and philanthropy for Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana, said it costs $23 per child per day to run the facility. “The way that we’re able to do that is through tremendous supporters as well as donations,” he said.
The John Will Anderson Foundation is the single largest supporter of the Valparaiso club. Kuch said the Valparaiso club is actually one of the largest in the country, second only to a club in Milwaukee.
That’s not surprising when jumping back into the list of dedicated rooms. There’s a gym with two full-sized basketball courts, an exergaming room that requires physical activity for each video game to operate, an art room, preteen and teen hangouts, a digital recording studio, an 18-foot rock wall, and a STEM lab outfitted by Northern Indiana Public Service Company.
That’s where 11-year-old Valparaiso resident Hailey Ton had installed herself on a recent Thursday afternoon taking a virtual reality tour of the attic Anne Frank hid in during World War II. “It’s really fun, and you don’t have to read anything,” she said of the experience.
Ton has been coming to the Valparaiso Boys & Girls Club since she was in kindergarten. “I always know it’s going to be a super fun day and some fun activity,” Ton said, admitting the daily experience is even better in the new building. “There’s new stuff to do. Everyone loves it,” she added.
The STEM Room alone offers microscopes, a 3D printer, a Glowforge Pro 3D laser printer, a touch screen board, a cart full of Chromebooks for learning coding, and robotic arms. “We’ve always had the STEM lab, but we didn’t have this kind of technology,” said education coordinator Jonathan Owens.
On the flip side of technology Owens is equally excited about the access to nature the new site offers. He hopes to create a trail and garden for the kids to learn from as well.
The parcel was acquired in a land swap with Urschel Development Corporation. “It’s their intent to keep the original Gardner School intact,” Kuch said of the old club location at 354 W. Jefferson St. There has been talk of turning the Romanesque style building that was constructed in the late 1890s into a boutique hotel.
While leaving behind the old site, which had housed the club since 1972, is a bit wistful, the club is really excited about another feature of its new location. “One of the reasons we loved this location is that Fairgrounds Park is right across the street,” Kuch said. “We’re excited for the skate park to open.”
And when fun and games aren’t what’s called for there are also quiet homework rooms with supercool furniture like modular couches to stretch out on, or hanging pods to get cozy in. Students can also make an appointment for one-on-one homework help in the tutoring room.
“It’s opened a lot of people’s eyes to what we do offer,” Beezhold said of another feature of the new space. “We’re here for working families, all families, in the community.”
Shelley Jones is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
![In an historic ruling that could change the trajectory of a rapidly heating planet, a court of law with binding jurisdiction over most of Europe has ruled that governments can be held liable for inadequate responses to climate change. The European Court of Human Rights determined that rising temperatures in Switzerland caused direct and tangible health consequences among Swiss citizens, and that governments failing to take adequate steps to mitigate and reduce carbon emissions could owe damages to people hurt by their inaction. Europe could take climate cases in a new direction The ECHR ruling is unprecedented in several respects, […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/PTB-Z-LAKES-ICE-0311-WRE0134550852.jpg?w=525 "In an historic ruling that could change the trajectory of a rapidly heating planet, a court of law with binding jurisdiction over most of Europe has ruled that governments can be held liable for inadequate responses to climate change. The European Court of Human Rights determined that rising temperatures in Switzerland caused direct and tangible health consequences among Swiss citizens, and that governments failing to take adequate steps to mitigate and reduce carbon emissions could owe damages to people hurt by their inaction. Europe could take climate cases in a new direction The ECHR ruling is unprecedented in several respects, […]")
![A jury convicted a Gary man Thursday evening of molesting two preteen girls. Joshua Hansen, 32, of Gary, was convicted of all 21 felonies he faced after a four-day trial, including three counts of Level 1 Felony child molesting. He is facing decades behind bars. Jurors deliberated for about four hours. His sentencing hearing is May 24 before Judge Salvador Vasquez. Hansen testified for about two hours Thursday where he categorically denied the victims’ accusations. During the testimony, his lawyer Marc Laterzo asked Hansen if he fondled one victim, or in another incident, had the other child perform a sex […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Post-Tribune.jpg?w=620 "A jury convicted a Gary man Thursday evening of molesting two preteen girls. Joshua Hansen, 32, of Gary, was convicted of all 21 felonies he faced after a four-day trial, including three counts of Level 1 Felony child molesting. He is facing decades behind bars. Jurors deliberated for about four hours. His sentencing hearing is May 24 before Judge Salvador Vasquez. Hansen testified for about two hours Thursday where he categorically denied the victims’ accusations. During the testimony, his lawyer Marc Laterzo asked Hansen if he fondled one victim, or in another incident, had the other child perform a sex […]")