New bathrooms unveiled at Boys & Girls Club

By Natalie Mollinet | [email protected]

In March, The Boys & Girls Club in Sugar House received a $50,000 grant from Lowes as a part of the Renovation Across the Nation initiative. The club knew exactly what they wanted to do with that money—renovate the old bathrooms. The club in Sugar House takes in hundreds of kids at a time after school, and with those numbers growing, the need for bigger and nicer bathrooms was needed.

“The kids are super excited, anything new is fun for kids and they’re excited to have something new and sparkly,” Amanda Ree Hughes, the director of development at the Boys & Girls Club said. “As a team we are excited to have clean and safe bathrooms. We want kids to have the best experience when they get here and want them to feel proud about their building including the bathrooms.”

The Sugar House Boys & Girls Club location was one of the 50 clubs picked from around the country to receive the grant, and with the help of Lowes staff members, the bathrooms were complete and ready to unveil March 1.

The Lowes’ team was more than happy to help with some of its own staff having been a part of the Boys & Girls Club community growing up. Lissa Gallego, the downtown manager at Lowes, said that she had around 10 members on the staff team that were more than willing to help because of their connection to the Boys & Girls Club, even if it wasn’t at the Sugar House location.

None of the children were involved in building or the demolition of the bathrooms, but were more than curious as to what was going on. Gallego said that some would just watch and observe and many of the younger children had questions and wanted to know what they were doing. She said it was a lot of fun answering their questions and seeing their curiosity.

“I hope they learned that their community cares about them,” Hughes said, “and that they are important and people want to help them, and they see people doing good things for them that they’ll want to help too.”

Lowes has been a big supporter of the Boys & Girls Club for 50 years and is always pushing to help the communities around them. One of their main focuses is to help school-aged kids in grades K-12 with their education and community improvements.

“We were really excited,” Hughes said about their selection in getting the renovations done.  “We had to apply for what kind of project we were in need of, and this bathroom project has been on our wish list for years.”

Hughes said not only do they have the Boys & Girls Club kids using the bathrooms, but the community also uses the building for Jr. Jazz and other sporting events. They said they wouldn’t have been able to do it without help from Lowes.

The Boys & Girls Club has been part of Sugar House for many years and is currently celebrating their 50th year in the neighborhood. For them it was a perfect 50th anniversary gift not only for the staff but for the kids as well, and they hope to be a part of the community for more years to come.  

“We appreciate being in the Sugar House community,” Hughes said, “We’ve been serving here and we’re excited to be here for another 50.”