Spaces Designed With Kids in Mind

A California charity seeks to meet the many needs and desires of its youthful clientele as it builds facilities

The last seven years have been a blur of planning meetings, architectural drawings, and construction crews for the

Boys & Girls Clubs of the North Valley, which is just completing its second major building project at its Chico, Calif., location.

Two years ago, the organization replaced its original home, a modest 2,500-square-foot cinder-block building donated by the city, with a brand-new, 10,000-square-foot clubhouse for children age 6 to 12. And now it is putting the finishing touches on a second building, a renovated carpet warehouse across the street that serves as a gymnasium and 3,000-square-foot center for teenagers.

An outdoor plaza connects the two buildings thanks to the charity’s success in persuading Chico officials to close the block to traffic.

The clubhouse cost $600,000 and was finished on time and on budget. The total cost of purchasing the warehouse and turning it into a gymnasium and center for teenagers was a little more than $2-million, with an additional $250,000 cost to construct the plaza. A very wet winter and the surprises that come with renovating a 100-year-old structure will put the completion of the second building an estimated six months to a year behind schedule.

The nonprofit group — which was founded in 1993, just six years before planning for the construction projects began — decided that new facilities were necessary if the organization was going to continue to grow, says Maureen Pierce, North Valley’s executive director.

“We weren’t going to build the Taj Mahal,” she says, “but we realized we had to have a place that looked inviting, that looked professional, that looked safe.”

More Space, More Choices

With more space, the organization has been able to increase the number of children it serves in Chico, and it has added bus service to the club through contracts with six local schools. Before, kids walked or found transportation on their own.

Now, on any given day, 250 youngsters come to the clubhouse after school, up from the 60 to 80 the organization’s first building could accommodate. And each day 70 to 80 middle- and high-school students come to the facility, compared to the five to 20 who came when there wasn’t a specific space for teenagers.

With more kids, the charity has been able to provide a more diverse array of programs. For instance, Ms. Pierce says the organization recently offered a guitar class for younger children. Because more children attend programs at the center, the guitar program attracted plenty of interest, which made a volunteer willing to teach the class.

Plus, she says, staff members don’t have to scramble to figure out where to hold the class.

“Before we were constantly trying to find another place in the area where we could have a Tae Kwon Do class or a boxing class,” says Ms. Pierce. “Now we don’t have to go off-site for anything unless we are taking a field trip.”

The completion of the center for teenagers means that the organization can provide a reliable place for older students to study and hang out.

“Teens really need that consistency and stability,” says Ms. Pierce. “They don’t keep calendars saying, ‘Oh, the club is open Tuesday from 2 to 6 and then Wednesday from 5 to 8.’ If it’s not consistent, they’re not coming.”

Paint a Picture

As the club sought to raise money for the renovation, it discovered that the best way to persuade donors to give was to show them exactly what the proposed structures would look like.

At first, North Valley had nothing but a floor plan to show donors, and officials say it was difficult for supporters to picture what the organization had in mind.

“This was a really cruddy neighborhood, and the buildings that we were in were literally crumbling down around us,” says Ms. Pierce. “You would turn on a light switch and water would pour out of it. So it was hard for people to envision what we had planned to build.”

With a watercolor of the proposed campus — painted by an architectural artist at Chico State University for the discounted price of $1,000 — the organization was able to start talking with donors about what would happen in the buildings and how children would move throughout the campus. In the end, the capital campaign, which started a week after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, far exceeded its $1.75-million goal, raising $3-million.

In the clubhouse for children, the central space is a large, airy games room, which Ms. Pierce says is designed to convey the organization’s commitment to fun.

“Fun and laughter and chaos — controlled chaos — is really an environment that is most conducive to attracting kids,” she says.

Long benches line the perimeter of the games room. Originally the benches were designed as a barrier to keep pool balls and other items from flying out of the games room into other areas. But Ms. Pierce says the kids love to sit on the benches to play, watch what’s going on, or wait for their turn to play pool or foosball.

The organization put vinyl flooring tiles on the front of the benches so the children could kick their feet as they sat.

Throughout the building, says Ms. Pierce, “we wanted to have materials that were really durable so that we wouldn’t constantly be going, ‘Oh no, you can’t do that,’ like going to Grandma’s house, where she has the white carpets.”

Bright vinyl flooring tiles in primary colors form patterns on the floor that lead to the rooms that surround the games room. The children frequently use the tiles to play hopscotch and other games. Overhead, a foam pterodactyl sculpture created by a local artist hangs from a 30-foot cupola. Ms. Pierce says the children tell each other tales about the pterodactyl, saying it eats children who misbehave.

“Maureen has had a great interest in the small things that tend to elicit emotional responses from the kids,” says R. Leslie Nichols, vice president for club safety and design at Boys & Girls Clubs of America, in Atlanta. Club leaders at North Valley, he says, are “really dedicated to understanding what makes fun happen, not just from the macro level, but they want to get into the details and how the details shape the design.”

While fun is the focus in the clubhouse, there are quiet nooks as well. The cozy reading corner, for example, has a fireplace, carpeting, and big pillows. Spots like this give kids a chance to read, sit quietly with a friend, or just get away from the activity of the games room.

“If they’re coming here every single day after school, they’re going to go through all the moods that we all do,” says Ms. Pierce. “If there’s never opportunity to go sit and be alone and pout, then we’re not giving them an opportunity to be their human selves.”

‘No Place for Them’

When the founders of Boys & Girls Clubs of the North Valley started the organization, they didn’t think that teenagers would be interested in what the organization had to offer.

But, says Ms. Pierce, it wasn’t long before the youngsters who came to the club as 7- or 8-year olds became teenagers. And “they still came every day after school,” she says. “But we literally had no place for them.”

What often happened was that the teenagers would cluster together outside the clubhouse, drawing complaints about loitering from nearby residents.

To solve the space issue, North Valley bought the warehouse across the street in 1999. But at the time, the charity didn’t have the money to fix it up. So for two years the teenagers used the building in its original state, with no heat or air conditioning.

While the conditions were not ideal, the situation did give the organization the opportunity to watch how the teenagers used the space and then incorporate that information into plans for its eventual renovation.

While the clubhouse for the younger children is light and airy, the remodeled center for the teenagers is darker and has more of a lounge or club feel to it, says Ms. Pierce. It has no windows to the outdoors, because adding them would have been too expensive. But inside the center, windows allow for visibility between the main lounge area and adjacent rooms, like the computer lab, meeting rooms, and the fitness center.

Teenagers, says Ms. Pierce, want to see what everyone is doing, and even more than the younger children, sometimes hover on the edges of an activity to feel connected with it, but not compelled to participate.

“It was really important for us to create the space so that if you weren’t a real confident kid or you weren’t the center of the party, you could kind of amble into the space and find a little spot, and feel like you were part of things without having to be in the center of it,” she says.

Strains of Construction

North Valley has been able to draw some valuable lessons from its experience building the new clubhouse and renovating the warehouse.

One of the most critical, says Ms. Pierce: Building projects put an enormous amount of stress on an organization. She says that if she had it to do over again, she would have set aside the money to get extra help on day-to-day operations while the organization’s leaders were focused on the new facilities.

The projects also taught the charity the importance of taking the time to think carefully about what a building is trying to achieve and then standing firm on the vision.

“It’s easy to get off course,” says Ms. Pierce, “particularly when you’re dealing with architects and building contractors who want to do it perhaps the expedient way.”

One example, she says, was the planning committee’s desire to have red window frames to add a playful note in the clubhouse. The contractor resisted, saying it would be easier and less expensive to use white frames. But the organization dug in, and eventually got its red windows.

Ms. Pierce advises charities to decide what features they really care about and fight for them.

“Find the things that make it special, and don’t compromise,” she says. “Compromise on the doorknobs.”

Boys & Girls Clubs of the North Valley will have the opportunity to use its experience. Plans for a new clubhouse and a center for teenagers is already under way in the nearby town of Paradise.