FOUNTAIN VALLEY : Youth Club Work Set to Resume

After a nearly a year’s delay, construction on the city’s new Boys & Girls Club building is due to resume next week.

“We’re going to get it done. It’s something I’ve got to do,” said George B. Scott, a 21-year City Council member who started working with the local club in the 1960s. “It’s been a goal since Day One.”

The work was halted after inspectors discovered that the pilings and foundation, already in place, would have to be raised by an inch and a half to comply with the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s flood plain requirements.

Construction on the 19,000-square-foot building’s brick walls had already begun, said Bob Hoxsie, past board president and current board member of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley, which also operates a club in Huntington Beach.

If the work resumes as expected, Hoxsie said, the new club, situated on a 2-acre site off Brookhurst Street at Mile Square Park, would be completed by late January.

Hoxsie, a supporter of the project for eight years, said the FEMA delay was one of several that have held up the project, which began in 1991.

In August, 1992, construction was halted to stabilize the ground. That work added $250,000 to the cost of the project, resulting in the loss of the club’s construction loan.

The club raised enough money to finish the exterior but still needs $500,000 to finish the interior, which is to include a gymnasium and a theater stage.

The total cost is projected to be about $1.7 million, Hoxsie said.