Booth Hall gets a reboot for Boys and Girls Club of the Lewis-Clark Valley

The bleachers on the north side of Booth Hall are still painted purple and gold.

But the colors of Lewiston High School will soon be replaced by Boys and Girls Club blue and white.

The 60-year-old building is in the midst of a $6 million transformation. For decades it served Bengal athletes and their fans. As soon as August, it will be rechristened as the Schweitzer Clubhouse of the Valley Boys and Girls Club and cater to children for generations to come. But club leaders hope it will also be an asset to the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley.

“We really wanted this to be a Boys and Girls Club, obviously, but community space (as well),” said Jon Evans, executive director of the club.

Work in progress

The gym floor has yet to be resurfaced, the old hoops still hang from the rafters and the basic footprint of the building is intact. But former students and gym rats may not recognize the place.

Evans gave the Lewiston Tribune a tour of the remodel last week. As he walked, he pointed out old features that have given way to new amenities.

The boys locker room and a trainer’s room are gone. In their place is a full-blown commercial kitchen stocked with fryers, ovens, stoves, a walk-in freezer and pantry. It has a teaching station where club members can explore the culinary arts with live or video instructors.

What was the girls locker room is now dedicated to arts and crafts as well as science, technology, engineering and math education. The weight room where student-athletes pumped iron will house staff offices and a place for kids to stow their backpacks, jackets and other belongings while at the club.

A game room that will be furnished with pingpong, foosball and pool tables took over space that once housed a tiny snack bar and men’s and women’s restrooms.

The entryway has been remodeled to control access to a single door where club members and visitors must check in.

Downstairs classrooms have been fashioned into administrative offices. The space includes a large meeting room, breakroom and two classrooms.

Community

Evans sees the pavilion and the adjacent kitchen as the centerpiece of the clubhouse that will be able to accommodate all sorts of large events. For example, Evans noted the club’s annual Breakfast for Kids will be held at the All Saints Catholic Church social hall Thursday.

“Next year, we’ll be able to have it here. You can easily, at round tables, sit probably between 600 and 800 people in there,” he said while standing in the kitchen. “If you imagine you had a big event here, there’ll be a buffet line there. So you just come in and get your food, come right back out.”

He said the club plans to hire a staff of four to seven people for the kitchen, which will serve before-school breakfast as well as lunches during the summer vacation.

“This was sponsored by Melva Prasil now. Melba’s grandkids call her ‘Honey,’ so this will be known as Honey’s Kitchen.”

Much of the facility, including the gym that will be known as the P1FCU Pavillion, can be rented out for community events. The same goes for the meeting room. The building will include a computer and server room and software that allows the staff to program access.

“The whole building will have controlled access key cards. So both for safety reasons and then also, our ability to rent it out, you can program it specifically,” he said. “So let’s say Battle Basketball had a tournament, we can program their card to the front door, the gym, the bathrooms, and then that’s it. They don’t have access to anywhere else.”

Club footprint

Between its three locations — two in Lewiston and one in Clarkston — the club handles up to 450 kids daily during the school year and as many as 700 per day over summer break. It runs a robust athletic program that includes basketball, soccer and flag football leagues.

When the Booth Hall remodel is finished, it will take over as the club’s headquarters. But the Orchards and Clarkston clubhouses will continue to operate.

Evans said the club looked at building a new gym some years back. The estimated cost, $4 million, was deemed too high, so club leaders balked.

That was before Lewiston voters approved a bond for a new high school and the campus of the old high school became available.

“This was actually the building that we wanted when everything went up for sale,” Evans said. “We weren’t expecting to buy everything else. But the (Lewiston School) District said all or nothing.”

The club bought the entire complex, now known as the DeAtley Family Foundation Community Campus, with the exception of the old high school itself which is still owned by the district. Evans said the club first worked to remodel the old science building and auto building and has leased them out to a charter school and a christian school respectively. The woodshop was remodeled into a temporary clubhouse.

Evans hopes to hold a series of community open houses in August.

He said the work was made possible by donations from community members and organizations, including Edward and Beatriz Schweitzer of Pullman, Melva Prasil, the DeAtley Family Foundation, P1FCU, the Sunderland Foundation, Murdock Family Foundation and the Idaho Workforce Development Council.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273.