Community Project Gives Boys and Girls Clubs New Addition

ST. CLOUD -- The St. Cloud area community has come together to create a new addition for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota's Eastside club.

Thanks to a $6,000 grant from the Great River Rotary of Sauk Rapids and Sartell, the club was able to build a garage to store activities equipment.

The garage mostly houses the club's van, lawn care equipment and gardening equipment. Kids often use the gardening equipment. Tom Wicks is the Director of Operations for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Central Minnesota. He says before they had the garage equipment had to be stored between different clubs.

"The garden equipment was put in little storage places here and there kind of dispersed in several different locations because it would have been too much in any one room. Then the lawn mowing equipment, we had to move from our Southside club weekly up to our Eastside club, so this way we will be able to keep it there."

Now with the garage, Wicks says everything should stay well kept. Along with the rotary grant, the club also received a donation to cover the costs for the roofing and siding costs.

"What was so interesting is as the project began other people started taking an interest in it. McDowall Company said they would donate the siding and the roofing material. Rice Builders, Chris Schuver is on our board of directors and works with Rice Companies, and they said they could help coordinate and contract the project."

The city of St. Cloud donated the parkland on Raymond Park where the garage now stands. Overhead Door also donated the garage door.

In total, the project took about four months to complete from planning to the finished project.