ARLINGTON — The final stretch of fundraising for the Arlington Boys & Girls Club’s expansion is set to kick off with team pictures Jan. 23.
What began in 2014 as a way to commemorate the club’s 40 years in Arlington, by doubling its gym size and adding a teen center, expanded to serve an even broader community after the Oso slide in March that year.
The Oso slide prompted the fundraising campaign to prioritize the family resource center ahead of the originally planned teen center, so the club still needs about $500,000 to add the teen center and a third half-court gym space, in addition to completing the renovations to Quake Field.
In addition to artificial surfacing Quake Field’s baseball and softball fields, the campaign will build two new ballfields.
In the end, the campaign will have raised $2.9 million.
The final phase of the campaign has been branded “Stilly 200,” because it’s asking 2,000 people to donate $250 each to meet its fundraising goal. Those donors will have the names of their choice engraved on a donor wall at the club, as well as at Quake Field.
Bill Kinney, unit director of the Arlington club, recalled that it opened as the Arlington Boys Club in 1974, when Arlington had a population of about 2,000 people.
By contrast, Kinney estimated the club now boasts around 2,200 members.
Even when the club opened its current facility in 1992, the town’s population was roughly 4,600 people.
“We’ve grown a lot since then, and there’s literally not enough room for us here now,” said Kinney, who started basketball nights at the club on Fridays and Saturdays in 1994. “Back then, there wasn’t any Arlington AAU or SWISH leagues, and we didn’t have any select teams. We just wanted to keep the kids engaged and safe”
With so many teams looking to play at the club at the same times, the Arlington club has had outsource its playing spaces, sending kids to Boys & Girls Clubs in Marysville and Darrington.
Kinney noted that his club also supplied $10,200 worth of sports scholarships last year, in addition to providing reduced rates to kids on free and reduced-price school lunches, “because I don’t ever want to have to say no to any kid.”
The impact of the slide forced the club’s fundraising campaign to address other aspects of the Arlington and Darrington communities as well.
After Gov. Jay Inslee visited the club, after the slide, the state pledged $5.25 million in its 2015-17 budget for the newly rechristened Stilly Valley Youth Project, which would include renovations not only to the club and the adjacent Quake Field, but also to youth programs serving Oso and Darrington.
Of that money, $1.5 million went to the club, while a $350,000 county grant for Quake Field received a $250,000 match from the state’s Youth Athletic Facilities fund.
With another $350,000 in contributions from private businesses, the Arlington Rotary and the Stillaguamish Tribe, the Stilly Valley Youth Project already has raised more than $2.4 million for the Arlington Boys & Girls Club’s expansions. Changes will include a second full-court gym space and a permanent location for a family resource center.
“It does make a difference,” Kinney said. “I’ve seen that. These kids come back, after they’ve graduated from high school and college, and thank me for helping them stay out of trouble. There are kids who grew up here who are now bringing in their grandkids.”
For details, call 360-435-4442 or visit bgcsc.org/stilly2000donate.
