Published in the April 5, 2018 edition.

WAKEFIELD — The Boys & Girls Club is on the move.

Club representatives announced yesterday they will relocate to the block across Main Street from the club’s current digs in the basement of the Americal Civic Center sometime in late summer or early fall.

A purchase and sale agreement is set to be signed tomorrow to buy a 34,000 square foot property (interior area is 28,000 square feet) that was once home to the Ristorante Molise, among other businesses, and currently houses a barber shop and a cabinet maker. The purchase price is $2.3 million.

The Boys & Girls Club here in town has grown remarkably since it opened in the Americal space in 2014, first serving about 60 kids a day and now hosting nearly 200. While the club has outgrown the Americal, officials wanted to stay close to the Galvin Middle School, where many of the club’s members are educated.

According to Anthony Guardia, the one-time Wakefield School Committeeman who is now chief development officer of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Stoneham and Wakefield, he and clubs’ Executive Director Adam Rodgers “decided to cold call the phone number posted in the window of the old Molise restaurant just to see if we could take a look at the building. I think I can safely say at the time neither of us thought it would lead to anything. I had a long talk with the owner (Alex Tsitos) and his son, and it became clear that there was a possibility that this could work.”

Negotiations began in October.

Guardia continued, “We had a lot of homework to do. We reviewed environmental reports, had architects, engineers and contractors visit; our number one goal was to make sure the building was structurally sound and safe for our kids.”

One thing that sold the Boys & Girls Club on the property was a three-story warehouse out back.

There are big plans for the new facility, including a gym, a Teen Center, a Pre-Teen Center and a theater. In addition to the $2.3 million purchase price, there is also an estimated $2 million that will be needed to build out the property.

A new facade will grace the building, Guardia said, and the restaurant space will be kept as a restaurant to rent out, allowing additional revenue for the clubs.

Guardia said that ground breaking at the site is expected to be sometime in July. A soft opening is tentatively scheduled for this September. From the soft opening through September 2019, the gym, Teen Center, Pre-Teen Center and theater will be constructed. The grand opening of the new facility is scheduled for September 2019.

The new Boys & Girls Club’s Wakefield location will offer programs like theater, art, TV studio, community garden, games room, maker space, music room, recording studio, homework/study room, teaching kitchen, technology center/STEAM lab, and much more, Guardia explained.

A capital campaign to raise money is planned.

“We realized to build the club Wakefield deserves,” Guardia continued, “the building would need quite a bit of construction, so as we negotiated we had to keep that in mind. (The owner, his son) and I would go back and forth quite a bit and to his credit, he would let us in every time we requested to investigate another part of the building. We finally had a breakthrough in March and settled on the purchase price last week.”

The annual lease at the current Boys & Girls Club location costs $70,000 a year.

“Buying this building is a culmination of a lot of hard work and a lot of generosity from this community. We’re very excited. However, the work in front of us is even harder. To build the club we envision we’re going to have to launch a major capital campain, and will need a lot of help from our town. With that said, I have no doubt in the generosity of Wakefield to help reinvigorate the downtown, build this facility for our kids, and ensure that our club is here for multiple generations,” Guardia concluded.