(West Okoboji)—Boys Town, a longtime fixture in the Iowa Great Lakes, is in the midst of a fundraising drive to update it facilities in the Terrace Park area of West Okoboji. Hundreds attended the camp’s second annual “Blue Water Bash” this past Saturday evening. Father Steven Boes (base) is the Director of the Boy’s Town Camp. He tells KUOO news the plans include a major facelift for the facilities here…(click here for comment.) “We have had HDR, an engineering firm in Omaha, design for us kind of a new look to the building. New windows, new externior treatment, so it really fits in with the neighborhood, kind of looks nice. Because you know how things have changed here in Okoboji. We’ve got lots of beautiful homes and we want to be good neighbors to the Okoboji community.”
Father Boes says the project will be one of the most significant upgrades the facility has seen since it was first constructed around 1950…(click here for comment.) “Well our total we’re looking at is about $200,000 to $250,000 is what it will take to complete the project. And that involves a lot: not just resurfacing the exterior, but a new building for some of the employees. Right now we’re paying rent off campus, so we thought if we do everything at once we could get rid of that expense and help more kids come to camp every year. So about 400 to 450 kids come every year to camp to Boys Town and they come from all over the United States. About 40 or 50 every year are from Iowa.”
He’s hopeful that if fundraising goes accordingly, construction could start as early as this coming fall…(click here for comment.) “We raised about $40,000 last year and if we raise about $60,000 this year, which I think we’ll be able to do, we’ll have $100,000, we’ll have about half, and then we’ll get started on the project this fall. If not we might have to wait a little bit until donations come in. But we like to have half of it in before we get started.”
Father Boes says the goal is to ensure a long, healthy future for the Boys Town Camp…(click here for comment.) “What Father Flannegan believed when he started Boys Town about 95 years ago was that he wanted to create a home for kids, not an institution, and he created a family-like environment. And families go on vacation together. So our Boys Town kids are able to go about 40 kids at a time come up here with their family teachers who also bring their own families. So our family teachers have two, three kids or so. They bring them and they all have a great experience here at Okoboji. And it’s kind of funny, because that’s what I did as a kid.”
More information on Boys Town and the fundraising for the renovation of its facility in the Iowa Great Lakes can be found online at www.boystown.org. Click on Blue Water Bash.
