Though the West Tampa Boys & Girls Club has a place to build a new facility, it will need a home while the building is under construction.
By SHERRI DAY
Published August 6, 2004
TAMPA - The City Council approved a lease agreement Thursday allowing the West Tampa Boys & Girls Club to move to Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park.
The agreement effectively ends the club's year-long search for a new home, needed because its MacDill Avenue building will be demolished to make way for a wider Interstate 275.
But a community group told the Council that the club also needs a solution to the displacement of nearly 200 children until the new facility opens.
"Essentially, there would be no Boys & Girls Club serving West Tampa for eight or nine months," said James Ransom, a spokesman for the recently formed Council on Black Issues.
"That's a problem. Grown-ups need to make some decisions here that will not disrupt these children and families. And it can be done."
Ransom and several community members, including representatives from the Hillsborough County NAACP and local churches, say they want the City Council to ask the state Transportation Department to let the club stay on MacDill Avenue until the new building opens in the fall of 2005. Under its current agreement, the Boys & Girls Club must leave its old building by January.
Otherwise, kids would have to be bused to other Tampa clubs, inconveniencing parents who would have to pick them up in Tampa Heights and downtown.
Ransom also suggested the city reimburse the Boys & Girls Club $250,000 in construction and design fees. City officials had initially agreed to relocate the Boys & Girls Club to nearby MacFarlane Park. But protests from preservationists and neighborhood residents derailed that plan last year, forcing the club to recreate building plans.
Council member Mary C. Alvarez, who supported the club's move to MacFarlane Park, dismissed the group's monetary request. She said the city has no financial obligation to the Boys & Girls Club.
But council member John Dingfelder said the city could tell state officials it supports a plan to let the club stay longer on MacDill Avenue. The council agreed to vote on a resolution at its next meeting.
A state Department of Transportation spokeswoman, while not at the meeting, said the state would consider the proposal.
"The Boys & Girls Club have not approached us yet on the issue, but we're willing to sit down and talk," said spokeswoman Kris Carson. "I don't want to give the impression that this could be done. I just don't know."
Carson said she did not know if granting an extension would delay the I-275 road-widening project.
Roy Opfer, chief executive of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Tampa, said he would welcome an extension but is pleased that the club finally has a new home.
"We have been working on getting a lease for at least three years," Opfer said. "What we do now is go down and do the final design for the building and get the permits submitted as quickly as possible."
Opfer said he hopes to begin construction on the new site this winter and to open the facility at the start of next school year.
