Yelm-branch Boys and Girls Club looks into expansion, expanding lease to 50-year length

Shellica Trevino, chief executive officer of the Boys and Girls Club of Thurston County, took some time during a Yelm City Council study session meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 1, to provide an update on membership numbers, a potential expansion and a proposal to extend its lease with the city to support the club’s growth hopes.

Trevino first provided an update on the Yelm-branch Boys and Girls Club of Thurston County location, and claimed the organization closed out 2025 serving 176 total local youth. Specifically, she noted that afternoon attendance at the branch was around 45-kids per day, and morning attendance averaged out around 50-children served per day.

“As you know, in your community lots of families leave town to go to work so having that option early in the morning is super important,” Trevino said. “About half the kids who attend the Yelm club qualify for free and reduced lunch. That’s an important note based on those families and their ability to pay for childcare, whether it’s licensed child care or license exempt like we are. We know that half, if not more, I would venture to say it’s more like 70% of the families that we serve really need support with lower-cost fees. That comes through in the way of scholarships, fundraising and anything we can do to keep our fees as low as possible.”

Trevino added that since 2019, the Yelm-branch Boys and Girls Club of Thurston County has served 526 individual local youth in the seven year timeframe. She stated that the club has been a busy place with lots of growth and opportunity for the children who attend it.
Trevino said that three years ago, the local branch applied for a building communities grant fund and was awarded with $100,000 to make renovations to the Yelm-branch Boys and Girls Club of Thurston County building — which previously served as Yelm City Hall.

“I worked with Cody (Colt) and the team on what we wanted to do. For those of you who have been in that space, especially when it was city hall, it was set up to be offices,” Trevino said. “It wasn’t necessarily set up for large groups of kids. In each of the rooms, we serve about 15 kids. Expanding those spaces, the old mayor’s chambers. We knocked a couple walls down. We added new flooring and opened up sightlines. That project allowed us to increase the number of kids we were seeing.”

Trevino believes that the Yelm-branch location still has a lot more that can be done within its space at the old city hall. She reached out to Colt to see what opportunities there are for expansion, and asked how the organization could make it happen legally.

She claimed that Colt brought her up to speed on an easement near the back of the Yelm-branch’s building, and noted that she was already familiar with the pipeline that runs underneath the building.

“I am told that we can kind of move out into the parking lot, and that we would be in a good space to do that within code,” Trevino said. “There would be enough street-front parking and all these great things.”

Trevino presented “the most hopeful option” regarding expansion at the Yelm location, including a mini gymnasium for attendees to play basketball and partake in other athletic activities in. She claimed that style of gymnasium is popular throughout the country, but isn’t intended to host legitimate sporting games.

Additionally, the proposed mini gym is roughly 3,000 square feet, and would be constructed on top of its current parking lot.

Aside from the new athletic facility, Trevino said there wouldn’t be many other changes to the current building.

“We could do so much more if we were able to clean up the sightlines,” she said. “That middle area is what we would call the games room or the commons, and everything is kind of built off of that,” Trevino said. “You’d have an art room, a tech lab, a teen center. All of these things are feeding off of that common area. This would allow us to double the amount of kids that are served out of that location.

“We take what we get and we make the best out of it,” she continued. “You guys gave us something that we could really work with. I’m deeply grateful for that, but there’s more that we can do.”

Trevino also described the organization’s current lease with the City of Yelm for its building space as a “generous one.” She noted the current 15-year lease is broken up into five-year segments and said it’s easy to renew. Additionally, the lease cost is $1 annually.

The Yelm-branch has applied for a legacy grant of $3 million, and Trevino believes an extended lease might be more appealing to the team in charge of the grants — rather than leaving the question of will this branch move locations once its current lease is up?

“That funder has been a funder of ours for 20-plus years. There’s no guarantee. I’m hoping and praying right now for this to happen. One of the things that came up was the lease, what length of time is left,” Trevino said. “It could make it look a lot more attractive to them, because this is the last set of grants this foundation is going to give. They’re going to give several at that level. Probably two dozen will receive grants of that size. The question that came up, mostly, in my interview with the trustees was around the lease.”

Councilor Tracey Wood spoke in favor of the City of Yelm extending its lease with the Yelm-branch Boys and Girls Club of Thurston County to 50 years.

“It just sounds like a 50-year lease wouldn’t be a danger on any level because there’s a clause with both parties to eliminate that under certain circumstances,” he said. “It just seems like it would create an opportunity for those folks in the future to have more funding available.”

Wood says he intends for the Boys and Girls Club to be in Yelm for a long time.