PORT ANGELES – Kids are now using a new Boys and Girls Club facility in Port Angeles.
The Turner Unit opened for businesses earlier this month with a handful of kids. It replaces a former four-plex in the Mount Angeles View Family Housing area.
The new building at Francis Street and Lauridsen Boulevard is three times the size of the previous Port Angeles unit. It cost about $8.5 million dollars and was funded mostly through donations, grants, and in-kind contributions.
Boys and Girls Club executive director Mary Budke says they can operate during the pandemic because they are deemed an essential childcare service by the state. They’ve been open through the pandemic, albeit in much closer quarters before now.
“And that is enabled parents and guardians to go to work. Those who work at Walgreens and Safeway and the gas stations and the hospitals, the businesses that were under the governor’s proclamation to remain open since the beginning of the pandemic a year ago. We have been open since the day after school closed last year.”
But now they can accommodate a lot more children in Port Angeles. Budke says they’re operating at about 40 percent capacity but will increase that once they work out how to keep kids effectively socially distanced in the facility. There is currently a 200-child wait list for the Port Angeles unit.
Budke says they’re especially poised to answer the need as Port Angeles elementary school kids return to school half days in April.
For nothing else the Boys and Girls Club is flexible, which changes daily. We are open 7:45 in the morning till 6 p.m. at night. But now with more kids going to school, and that school day looks right now to be two point seven hours two different times a day. So in the morning your son could be at the club, go to school, be picked up after school, and be at the club till 6 p.m. So we are preparing for that for the week after spring break.”
The Port Angeles unit is named for longtime area residents Norma and Gene Turner. Norma is the vice-chair of the Boys and Girls Club’s board of directors and was instrumental in helping a fundraising effort that led the new Port Angeles building.
The Turner unit now also has a gymnasium and commercial kitchen, as well as dedicated teen spaces.