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A new Boys & Girls Club planned in Gresham is designed to be a refuge for children and teens.

“That’s the main reason why kids go here is to feel safe,” said Dave Otte, a Holst Architecture senior associate. “This place has to really be a safe haven for the kids.”

The Portland-based firm took that into account as it designed a facility at Southeast 165th Avenue and Stark Street, in Gresham’s Rockwood area. Open sightlines were maintained throughout the building, the main entrance’s placement was chosen carefully and a central courtyard was located away from the street.

The estimated $5.5 million to $6 million project is a rare opportunity for the Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland Metropolitan Area to build a club from the ground up. The 30,000-square-foot facility will be the first the organization has built since 2007.

“They really see this as their flagship,” Otte said. “The last few clubs that they’ve done have been taking over (existing) clubs. This is really their chance to do a club from scratch.”

The Rockwood club will have 23,000 square feet of new construction wrapping around an existing 7,000-square-foot former nursery building that will be repurposed into a teen center. Throughout the design process, Holst Architecture worked closely with Boys & Girls Clubs staffers. Some of their feedback surprised Otte.

“They didn’t want a design that was childish,” he said. “They wanted it to be a grown-up experience for the kids (in) that they weren’t playing down to them – that they were respected.”

As a result, the club won’t have an overly colorful palette or other characteristics typical of buildings designed for children. The idea is to let children become comfortable in a building reminiscent of those found on a college campus or in a professional setting, Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland CEO Erin Hubert said.

“We’re trying to prepare these kids for successful adulthood,” she said. “We want them to get used to walking into buildings that look like that.”

Another careful consideration was the club’s site in a rough part of Gresham.

“You want a building that is warm and inviting, yet with the criminal and gang activities you have out there, has sort of a fortress feeling,” Hubert said. “It’s kind of a cocoon for the kids.”

One challenge was figuring out how to obscure the view of children from people looking inside street-facing windows, Otte said. Some existing Boys & Girls Clubs have blacked-out windows so that gang members and dangerous adults can’t see who is inside, he said. The Rockwood club will have window screens that let in light and give a sense of activity, but block faces.

The club’s single main entrance will be away from busy Stark Street so that everyone entering and leaving can be monitored. Also, the building layout will let Boys & Girls Clubs staffers easily scan activity happening in each room.

“There are eyes seeing every kid come in and come out,” Otte said. “It’s extremely controlled, and once they’re in, they’re in this safe environment where they can do a myriad of things.”

The club is expected to daily serve 300 to 400 youths between the ages of six and 18. After-school recreational activities and academic support will be provided in an area where most children receive free or reduced-cost school lunches, Otte said.

“If you looked at where all the Boys & Girls Clubs were, Gresham was this big hole, which also happens to be the most in-need part of the community for something like that,” he said. “These kids need a place to go.”

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland currently offers after-school programs in Gresham at three Reynolds School District elementary schools, but it has been working for about a year to build a club, Hubert said.

“We really needed to get a club out there, (but) the right situation hadn’t come along,” she said. “I also knew there was a lot of need and not a lot of services.”

The project got a boost when a nearly 4-acre property owned by the city of Gresham became available. The club will take up about half of the site.

“It gave us more room and allowed us to have more amenities,” Hubert said.

The teen center will include a computer lab, a music recording studio, a lounge and a game room. The children’s side of the club will include an art room, and learning and technology centers. All youths will be able to dine in a cafeteria featuring free after-school meals. A gym will be large enough to include bleachers.

Project construction is scheduled to start in spring 2015 and wrap up in 2016. Portland-based P&C Construction will be the contractor.