College up close

“It really is a dream — and it is going to happen,” said Tanya Hoxsie, the chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley.

The club is soon to become the first in the state to put a club facility on a college campus; its groundbreaking ceremony was Friday at Golden West College.

Luminaries from Ed Arnold of KOCE to local mayors, a police chief and city council members attended the groundbreaking.

“For kids who grow up here, college will just become a normal way of life, not something you see at a distance,” Hoxsie said.

She’s already seen the mental turnaround at work in some kids — particularly, one student who visited the campus as part of a group.

“They said, ‘This is the biggest school I’ve ever seen in my life. And now I know I can go here,’” Hoxsie said.

The new facility will be located in a verdant, quiet area of the campus that currently holds unused handball courts.

The design, which will serve up to 2,500 kids, calls for a child development preschool with eight classrooms, a youth clubhouse and a gymnasium.

Club members benefit from programs like homework assistance, computer classes, fine arts instruction, leadership and service clubs, cooking classes and sports leagues.

The gym will be shared by the college and the club.

“There just isn’t a project that’s better or more exciting for the community,” Hoxsie said.

“Our board of trustees has been very supportive with getting this project off the ground. It all gelled, and this was the outcome,” said Coast College District Chancellor Ken Yglesias.

“The three colleges really put a lot of effort into helping the community.”

“Our idea to do this probably came about seven or eight years ago,” Hoxsie said. “It just took awhile to get people to embrace it.”

When the club first began seeking the perfect location for its next facility, they zeroed in on the intersection of Goldenwest Street and Edinger Avenue — just down the road from where the new building will be installed.

“This was the exact area that we wanted a new club in,” Hoxsie said.

But two or three acres of cheap, empty land simply didn’t exist anywhere, so the club kept coming back to the college.

The club already operates a child development center on the college campus; it took over the center three years ago, when the center was struggling.

“At that point, they started to see that people were picking the college because childcare was already there.”

With the new construction, the center will be 50% larger than its current size.

A $6-million fundraising campaign for the facility has begun, but funds from tomorrow night’s gala dinner and auction will go to scholarships instead.

Although the club is financially stable, the new facility is still seen as a bit of a stretch.

“We know it’s not the easy thing, but it’s the right thing,” Hoxsie said.

For more information, call (714) 531-CLUB or visit buildingdreamscampaign.com.