July 12, 2026
By Jonathan Rich
BrevardBeagle.com
School is not in session for most local children during the months of June, July and August, but that does not mean there was not a lot going on off Gallimore Road at The Cindy Platt Boys & Girls Club of Transylvania County this summer.
During the school year, this local affiliate of the national Boys & Girls Club provides programming to youth ages 5 to 18 every Monday through Friday from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. In the summer months local boys and girls are welcome there from 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. during the week.
The summer of 2026 was not exactly a quiet one for CEO Jamie Atkinson due to ongoing construction, but that was all part of the plan and a bigger picture for the ever-growing nonprofit afterschool organization.
In August 2023, Transylvania’s Boys and Girls Club broke ground to expand its physical space and offerings as part of its “Building a Place to Belong” capital campaign. That same month three years ago, it purchased a church building across the street from its main campus to serve as a temporary home for its Teen Club.
The summer of 2024 saw renovations start on the main clubhouse with new furniture and flooring installed while a renovated classroom simultaneously opened to support young minds’ interests in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) studies. That same summer, Joyce’s Playground and the Strayhorn Family Basketball Court both reopened with new equipment from generous donors.
Last summer four renovated classrooms reopened in addition to the Deyo Family Garden and outdoor classroom, but this summer Atkinson and her staff served Transylvania County’s children amid the construction of a permanent home the new Sykes Family Teen Center where a building and small house once stood across a busy highway from Brevard Elementary School.
All construction is scheduled to be completed by the summer of 2027 when the new 7,000 square-foot teen center will open with four classrooms, two lounge spaces and a covered walkway leading back to the main clubhouse from a new outdoor recreation space.
“We will have more classrooms for afterschool programming like places to do homework, reading and writing and other academic focuses, but we also want to provide a collaborative learning space where we have updated computers for our kids to learn how to do computer coding and even a podcasting corner because some are super into that right now,” Atkinson said as she navigated the metal construction studs and beams in June. “Then we will have a room where the older teens can get help filling out college applications, job applications and scholarship applications with a counselor or their parents.”
The new space will even have a washer and dryer for teens to use, as well as a self-service kitchen.
“We did a lot of consultations with other clubs as well as asking the community what was important to them and learning from others’ experiences about what this space could be,” she explained. “The ends of this building are more like their social space where we want to provide them a place to just be a kid and learn about life at their own pace.”
The expansion is necessary as 280 students use the facilities each day during the school year and there is a growing waiting list with even more students ready for their memberships to begin.
“This new building will add the capacity for us to serve more than a hundred additional kids each day and hopefully it will be open by the end of the next school year,” Atkinson said thinking about the future. “We have one more expansion or addition on the back of the big building that we will get done. When we’re done with both buildings, we will have the capacity to serve 25% of school-aged youth in the county.”
The price tag for both construction projects will exceed $9 million dollars once the paint on the walls that are still being built dries, but Atkinson hopes the funding for local children to have a place to belong will continue to be a communal effort.
“The amazing thing is that I would say out of everything that we’ve gotten in terms of funding, 85% of it has come from individuals in our community. I think that says Transylvania County believes in the future by investing in our youth,” she said. “Next summer, instead of being divided by Gallimore Road we will all be here together. The teens and middle school kids will be able to have their own space, but also feel included in the main campus.”