Construction crews have broken ground on a new 13,900-square-foot Boys & Girls Club within the Vancouver Housing Authority’s (VHA) public housing neighborhood, Skyline Crest. The development is one of four phases planned for the neighborhood, each aiming to create jobs and to serve the community.
The four phases of development include: Residential renovations of 138 units of subsidized housing (already underway); the new Boys and Girls Club; an 8,500-square-foot education and employment center; and approximately two dozen new single-unit apartments. The total development cost for the four phases is $30 million.
Initially built in 1963 as the area’s first public housing, Skyline Crest (located near Andresen Road and Mill Plain Boulevard) has long been in need of an upgrade, according to Jan Wichert, director of employee and resident services at VHA.
“The mission is to connect families with resources, help them find jobs and to hopefully eventually move them through the subsidized housing program,” said Wichert. “We cannot just build homes. We are creating long-term solutions to put them on a path to get out of the cycle of poverty.”
The Boys and Girls Club, set to open in April of 2016, will act as a central “hub” for kids in the McLoughlin Heights and Skyline Crest Neighborhoods. The new club is expected to serve close to 600 youth within a one-mile radius.
“If our clubs weren’t here, hundreds of children in our community would be left without adult supervision after school,” said Elise Menashe, executive director, Boys & Girls Clubs of Southwest Washington. “The overarching goal of this project is the same as our organizational goal: to increase access to safe, affordable, high-quality youth programming outside of school hours.”
Sharing a wall with the new Boys & Girls Club will be the Bridgeview Education and Employment Center – a nonprofit formed by the VHA that operates as a referral and support organization to all residents of Clark County, including the more than 2,000 VHA subsidized housing residents. Having these two buildings connected will give parents and youth in the community easy access multiple resources and educational programs, officials said. This phase of the project will begin construction in April of 2016 and is set to finish in February of 2017.
“This will have a huge impact on the community,” said Wichert. “If we do this well, if kids go to school and we help create jobs through our working partners; we can help break the cycle of poverty. We are very fortunate to have partners and investors that are on board to help us build a community.”
One of those partners is WorkSource, which plans to have a permanent presence with a full staff in the new resource building.
“Having an employment center here in our hub will create easy access for job seekers and connect them with resources like education and training,” said Wichert. “We work with more than 90 partners that will have access to our facility. We all work together to provide our expertise and this will benefit everyone.”
The final phase of the project – 25 residential units known as the Caples Terrace apartments – will sit on property that currently houses the existing VHA-owned community center. Construction on the apartments is expected to begin once the employment center is complete.
The project is being funded by the VHA in partnership with Bridgeview, the Boys & Girls Club, Clark County and the city of Vancouver. Bridgeview also received a Community Development Block Grant and will be asking the state Legislature for additional construction funding when the session resumes in January of 2016.
