The Boys & Girls Club of Bloomington-Normal has been planning a move for the past few years. The club already has donated land from the city of Bloomington on the west side.
Local club CEO Tony Morstatter tells WGLT's Melissa Ellin they've been waiting on funding to come through to get them there.
WGLT: Around four years ago, the Boys and Girls Club acquired the new property with the goal of building a new facility there. You paid $1 for it. It's the Sunnyside Park property just down the street in west Bloomington from your current location. You haven't yet broken ground. So can you start by giving me an update on progress there?
Morstatter: We've got about 40% of our goal has been committed to the project. We all recognize inflation and supply chains has had an impact. So right now, as the building is designed, we're looking at roughly a 55,000-square-foot building at Sunnyside Park. With that, we're looking at about a $17 million project. That number is volatile, again, with supply chain, inflation, all of that. But so right now, we've got about a little over $6.38 million committed to the project.
And what would a timeline on that look like?
Not soon enough. Early on, I set a goal of trying to break ground. Last year — 2022 — was our 30-year anniversary. It would have been a great way to celebrate that milestone. You know, we recognize that it's a big project. It's a big vision for our community. And with that, it's going to take some time, patience, but also dedication from our campaign cabinet as well.
The new space, I understand, will have added behavioral health resources available. Also, it will increase the capacity of kiddos and families that you're able to cater to. Can you talk to me a little bit about that? And what we're going to see there?
Capacity is a major challenge for us. You know, over the years, our waiting list continues to grow. You know, as we start our 2023-2024 school year program, we've got over 110 families registered at the club. Actually, that's 110 members. The unfortunate thing is we've got 45 families that are on our waiting list — that want a safe place, that need a safe place for their kids to be after school and before they come home. So that's a major concern. Capacity also creates challenges with the programs to provide quality, impactful programs. A lot of the times our staff are doing the best that they can within the space that they're allowed to do it in, so the new building absolutely will provide greater opportunities for program capacity, as well as to be able to serve over 600 kids on an average day. Behavior mental health over the years, since COVID, has been an area of attention that our community has focused on. We recognize the need.
This is all not to say that you aren't already doing those behavioral health programs. You are on stage three of becoming a Trauma-Informed Organization as a club. There [have] also been added staff that you have that are mental health specialists. And then there's also the Zen Den, which has recently been added, which has two counseling offices within it and also can act as a safe space within the current location of the Boys and Girls Club. So expand on those behavioral health resources that are already available.
Since about 2018, we created a space within our facility called the “chill spot.” Oftentimes our kids come into the club with many different emotions, experiences that may have happened on the bus at school, you know, maybe even just walking into the club. And our kids are expressing those emotions, those feelings, however they know how. So what we've identified is we need to provide a space for our kids to be able to go and take a moment and calm themselves, use some coping mechanisms that our social work interns, our various staff that we have specifically focused on social-emotional learning curriculum, to help them regain composure, regulate their emotions and safely reintegrate into a program space. So that way, they're not disruptive, behavior is under control, their emotions are under control.
I do want to talk about the past for a moment. In 2018 there was an incident with a volunteer who was found to have sexually assaulted a member of the club — a teen member — and I'm wondering how operations have changed since then, and how that has impacted the club's approach to behavioral health like we've been talking about?
In the 46 years that I've been alive, this is one of the things that I'd never want anybody to ever have to go through — as a leader, as a family member, as a young person — because of the impact it has on so many people. First and foremost, the safety of our members is our number one priority, and to be in a situation where we feel like there was something missed, where somehow this was allowed to happen. There needs to be change. In any experience that we have, we recognize that we're human beings and that mistakes will happen. Where I'm not comfortable is if a mistake happens, if we don't make a change to be better, then we're not doing what we're supposed to be doing. So not only have we changed our protocols — the background check policies, we got mandatory trainings for our volunteers — the onboarding for our volunteers at a national level has all been reinforced, so to speak.
Boys & Girls Club Bloomington-Normal CEO Morstatter said behavioral health has also been emphasized for staff since this happened in 2018.
At the Sunnyside facility, there are plans to increase behavioral health spaces, including a room for family counseling — something that is limited by the current location's size.
Additional funding will need to be acquired through grants, sponsors and individual donations before the club can break ground at Sunnyside. When they do break ground, the club plans to keep current structures, including the park, in place. They will also make room for green space.
