Home for Boys & Girls Club still a wish

A dream of having a Boys & Girls Club site at the head of Bob Bryant Park in Bastrop is on hold after the organization failed to raise enough funds over the past decade to support a permanent indoor recreation center.

In 2005, when the Bryant family donated the land in Central Bastrop for Bob Bryant Park, it had stipulated that a 1-acre tract be reserved for indoor recreation, calling on the local Boys & Girls Club to build a facility that would serve the city’s disadvantaged youths. As per the agreement, the club had 10 years to raise $300,000 to build the center.

With the clock winding down on the deal, the nonprofit failed to raise the necessary funds.

The city had proposed extending its lease agreement with the Boys & Girls Club at meetings in November and December, which would give the organization more time to come up with the money.

However, city attorney Alan Bojorquez realized the land already had been deeded back to the city in January 2016, as per the original agreement. Bastrop cannot extend the lease to the Boys & Girls Club for the site without holding an election, a stipulation in the local government code, he said.

For now, the 1-acre tract at Bob Bryant Park belongs to Bastrop.

City Manager Lynda Humble said that if the Boys & Girls Club comes up with enough money to build a facility, she would be the first to find a suitable piece of land in Bastrop for it.

“We absolutely want to be a good neighbor to them,” Bastrop Mayor Connie Schroeder said.

The Boys & Girls Club would love to have its own space in Bastrop, said executive director Leo Santana, though it does not have the funds to dedicate to the project. Even if it did have a building, Santana said the organization doesn’t have the money to furnish or staff it.

“We want it, of course,” Santana said. “But we want to make sure we are first sustaining programming.”

The Boys & Girls Club provides activities and social and emotional learning to children ages 6 to 18 in seven locations across Bastrop County.

The city originally had planned to provide space for the Bastrop branch at its new emergency shelter, when it was slated to be built at Bob Bryant Park. However, that plan changed when the building shifted to a new location on Linden Street, and now the Bastrop Senior Center will use the facility when it’s not opened as a shelter.

Council Member Gary Schiff said in October he still hoped to see the city provide some space for the Boys & Girls Club. “I want to make sure we don’t lose sight of where we came from on this,” he said.

At the time, Humble had assured him the city would extend the Boys & Girls Club’s lease at Bob Bryant Park.

For now, however, the organization will continue to make use of its space at the Schulman Theatres Lost Pines on Chestnut Street, in a cordoned-off section in back where it has been offering after-school programming, primarily to Mina and Emile elementary students, since 2016.

“We are content today to do the most programming we can at the space we have,” Santana said. “We can do certain things, but not everything we want to do. To have a facility anywhere would be great.”