The Ballard Boys and Girls Club is planning a 6,000 square foot addition to its building to meet increasing demand on the club's services.

“Our main focus is probably to add about 75 to 100 kids on a daily basis that come to the club,” Mark Hendricks, the club's executive branch director said.

A second floor was added to the club eight years ago. Hendricks said the staff and kids were crammed elbow-to-elbow in the previous building.

“Our numbers didn’t increase (after the addition) but our quality did,” he said. “By dividing kids in age groups, they were able to play appropriately with their age groups."

The Ballard Boys and Girls Club is one of 13 clubs in King County, which share funding. The eight-year-old addition exhausted the club’s capital project funds, said Hendricks.

The full funding amount for the addition, expected to cost between $1.7 and $2 million, has been generously helped thanks to a donation from local Ballard residents John and Shawn Goodman, who pledged $1 million dollars.

“John and his wife, Shawn, said yes to making the pledge to get this project up and started,” Hendricks said. “We were the number one club to have a renovation, so we tore the roof off half the club and built the second floor, but we still found we were turning kids away,” Hendricks said. “I knew without us locally raising money it (additional renovation) wasn’t going to be happening. We couldn’t talk about expanding because all these other clubs were still waiting for funding.”

Hendricks also asked for a $500,000 matching fund from a trust left to the club by Harry and Clare Wilson, long time club supporters.

“Harry and Clare Wilson left us in their will, so every year we get an annual check for capital improvements for the Ballard branch,” Hendricks said. “The Wilson money is on a matching basis so we need to go out and raise money locally to get the other $500,000.”

With three-quarters of the funding intact, Hendricks said they’ve teamed up with Meng Strazzara Architecture Engineering Planning to design the renovations and are now waiting to get the green light from the corporate board in two weeks.

The addition will about 6,000 square feet. Plans are not solid yet, but it could be a two-story addition, said Hendricks.

The parking lot and entrance to the lot could change from its current location at the corner of 64th Street to an entrance on 63rd Street entrance, where the playground is currently. The playground would be moved on the north side along 64th Street.

“What it really does is it ties our classroom space together versus having classroom space in two different areas,” Hendricks said. “It flows better.”

The new renovation would not only double the number of kids the club could serve, Hendricks said, but it would give each class its own room.

"Our biggest addition would be our middle school and high school space." he said. "We don't really have space for them now. We’re trying to really respect the ages and set up age appropriate activities."

Hendricks said the next step, besides waiting for approval of funds, will be a focusing on a fundraising campaign.

"We'll have a model to take out amongst the community and we'll get the community behind us," he said. "I'd really expect construction would start a year from now, sometime probably in September."

Hendricks expects the renovation to take about four to six months.

"This is definitely needed," he said. "The worse thing in the world is turning a parent away that really needs this, my passion is kids and how we can serve them."