Aurora Boys and Girls Club to get $500,000 from feds to build clubhouse

U.S. Rep. Bill Foster announced Thursday he has secured $500,000 in federal funding for building a clubhouse for the Boys and Girls Club of Aurora.

“When kids look at that building, they’ll know: ‘A community that builds a place like this for me, cares about me,’” the Congressman said at a check-presentation ceremony.

The club plans to construct a 45,000-square-foot building at an estimated cost of $18 million.

It does not have a location but said it plans to build the center on the east side of the city. In 2023, the Aurora City Council agreed to consider donating a 1.7-acre site across the street from Garfield Park. But that site has been dropped, according to a spokesman for the mayor. The club and the city are discussing other sites.

In the meantime, the club offers programming at five schools in Aurora and North Aurora.

Plans call for the center to have a gym, a track, a stage, a library, a teen center, a kitchen and café, and a room for working on science, technology, arts, engineering and mathematics projects.

The club is sponsored by the Boys and Girls Club of Elgin.

Cathy Russell, the chief executive officer of the Boys and Girls Club of North Central Illinois, said the organization has raised about 15% of the money needed to build the facility. She said the club wants to have all the money pledged within a year, and to open the clubhouse by fall 2027.

She said the organization hopes the Aurora clubhouse will the the 100th facility in the “Moonshot: 100” campaign, where it hopes to have 100 sites in the next few years, with many at schools, via mobile units and businesses.

The Aurora clubhouse would serve 450 Aurora-area youth.

The $500,000 would come from Community Project Funding, where members of Congress request direct funding for projects.