East Dallas Boys and Girls Club

Photo by Danny Fulgnecio.

The Boys & Girls Club of East Dallas is headed toward a $200,000 renovation

Around 4 p.m. every school day, vans pull up to the Boys & Girls Club of East Dallas, and noisy children spill out.

Sign up for our newsletter

* indicates required

For employees of the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Dallas, whose offices are next door to the club on Worth Street, it’s a better pick-me-up than an afternoon latte.

“It’s like, ‘They’re here!’ ” says Tosha Di Iorio, the nonprofit’s vice president of marketing and resource development. “It’s a beautiful sound.”

Since the club is adjacent to the headquarters, Di Iorio calls it their “show club.” When potential donors and community leaders visit their offices, they often tour the East Dallas club. But the club hasn’t been exactly showroom material. The after-school program moved into the former Minyard grocery store on Worth at Prairie in Old East Dallas in 1976. Since then, thousands of kids have clamored off those vans, and updates have been piecemeal and infrequent.

But an initial $60,000 grant from the Real Estate Council earlier this year set the Boys and Girls club on the way to total renovation. About five years ago, the club got a new gym floor and a mural. But much more work was needed. The first phase of renovation, currently underway, includes new air conditioning units donated by Lennox, leveling the floors, new lighting, new bathrooms and a reception area. Gensler Dallas architects is donating the design. The architecture firm started its work by interviewing the club’s members.

“You would’ve thought we were their top client,” Di Iorio says of the pro-bono job.

In all, 25 organizations have donated to make the first phase a reality, including the real estate development firm Jackson Shaw, which matched the Real Estate Council’s grant.

“We’re designing it to budget,” Di Iorio says of the renovation. “If we get a $10,000 donation for a reception center, then it will be a $10,000 reception center.”

The nonprofit also has plans to renovate its kitchen and create a café and community garden where kids can eat their snacks and learn about nutrition. Di Iorio says she hopes updates to the building’s façade will make the club more of a focal point in the neighborhood.

Part of the nonprofit’s current mission is to change perceptions. The Boys & Girls Club is not “a bunch of kids that need to be kept off the street,” says executive director Greg Robinson.

It’s not just basketball and foosball, although there is some of that. Families pay $20 annually per child for after-school care from 3-7 p.m. That includes transportation and snacks.

More important, the clubs provide tutoring — any student who receives a 79 or lower in any class is required to attend tutoring — as well as art and reading lessons. The clubs also enforce strict rules of conduct.

Di Iorio says they hope the makeover, particularly the new façade and the garden, will help to bring the club closer to neighbors. They are planning a brick campaign, where neighbors can purchase engraved bricks, which would go in the building’s façade.

“This is their club, and these are their kids,” Di Iorio says.

So far, the nonprofit has raised more than $100,000 in cash, goods and services for the renovation, which is expected to cost about $200,000.

The Boys & Girls Club of East Dallas is the first club in the Dallas area to receive a total makeover. Once it is completed, a fundraising campaign will start for the club in Oak Cliff.

The East Dallas club is “a flagship location for the Boys & Girls Club,” says Robin Minnick, foundation director for the Real Estate Council. “If we can help them to create this sense of hope, then it is our hope that they would also be able to attract dollars for their other locations and help impact more neighborhoods and more kids.”