Center of Attention

SIMI VALLEY — For years, backers of Simi Valley’s Boys & Girls Club threw fund-raising auctions and hustled local corporations for money to build a new youth center--all in the belief that Simi kids needed something to do.

They didn’t know how right they were.

One year after opening its new center at Rancho Tapo Community Park, the club’s membership has doubled, with more than 2,000 children, ages 7 through 17, registered.

On a typical summer afternoon, 400 kids pack the building, shooting hoops in the gym, testing each other at Foosball or testing their own strength in the weight room.

The club will celebrate its first year in the new location with an open house Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Timed to coincide with an arts and crafts festival in the park, the first birthday celebration will include tours of the building and, of course, a bake sale to continue the club’s never-ending fund-raising efforts.

“All we want to do is open the doors and let the people of Simi Valley see what we have,” said Keith Jajko, an officer on the club’s executive board and an aide to Ventura County Supervisor Judy Mikels. “This building is fantastic.”

When members of the local Jaycees founded the Simi chapter of the club in 1970, such spacious digs were but a dream. The club first operated out of four trailers near the intersection of Los Angeles Avenue and Stow Street. Although the trailers made fine game rooms--with space for pool and Foosball tables--they couldn’t accommodate, say, a basketball court.

“We tried--didn’t work,” said the club’s operations director, J. R. “Jim” Lowry.

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After three or four years, the trailers were relocated to Sycamore Drive north of the Ronald Reagan Freeway. Then, in the mid-1980s, the club moved into a corner of the shuttered Bellwood Elementary School, leasing about 11,000 square feet from the school district. But those quarters soon became cramped.

To build its own center, the club would endure a 10-year process of scrounging for money and hunting for a location. Once club leaders had set their sights on a piece of city-owned land next to the park, they also had to fight off a legal challenge from a neighbor upset that the 25,565-square-foot building could block his view.

In the end, much of the building’s $3.2-million cost was covered by Community Development grants and the city of Simi Valley. The club is now raising money to repay $1.2 million that the city poured into the project, with the next fund-raising auction scheduled June 7.

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Lowry points out that the club provides the city a service by giving local youths a place to go, someplace they can consider their own.

“Our goal is to get those kids off the street and into here,” he said. “It’s not just vegging. We’d like to have them learn and do things.”

Mayor Greg Stratton, who played a key role in creating the club 27 years ago, said the new building filled a gap in the city’s recreational opportunities for young people.

“It was a way we could provide a much-needed facility for that age group,” he said. “Certainly in a family-oriented community like ours, that’s a tremendous need.”