Work on Sammamish Teen Center Scheduled to Begin on Monday

Interior renovation at the Teen Center in Sammamish is scheduled to begin Monday and expected to be finished in about two months, the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County Redmond/Sammamish said Friday.

The organization is working with Andersen Construction in turning the old Sammamish Library at 228th Avenue Northeast and Inglewood Hill Road into the Sammamish EX3 Teen and Recreation Center. The exact address is 825 228th Ave. NE.

The center will have a performance stage, game room, study area, multipurpose space, teaching kitchen, technology lab – and eventually a gymnasium. The group has said the renovated space will cover 10,000 square feet.

"The Sammamish community has waited so long for this to happen.  We are grateful for their patience and confident they will be a part of this amazing opportunity," Jane Ronngren, the group's executive director for the Redmond/Sammamish club, said in a statement.

"We will soon be offering regularly scheduled public tours so that the community can experience firsthand the future of its youth and teens."

The is a partner in the Teen Center project. The city purchased the building from the King County Library System, city spokesman Tim Larson said.

But the Boys & Girls Clubs of King County Redmond/Sammamish will operate the facility. It will be open for community use when young people are at school, the group said.

The organization estimates there are 6,000 teens in the Sammamish area. In June, the group and city sponsored the annual , which included and , and attracted more than 1,200 teens who live in Sammamish or attend school in the city.

"Providing a place where teens are able to explore new challenges, experience new opportunities, and get excited about their skills, interests, and most importantly, their futures, is critical to our community," Ronngren said in a statement.

In February, the group discussed plans to build a 7,000-square-foot, high school-sized gymnasium, which would have a climbing wall, next to the old library.

There also were plans to open the Teen Center this summer. But that opening date was pushed back.

The renovation work is being supported by more than $1 million in contributions from area residents, foundations and companies, including Microsoft. The group is planning to ask residents, community groups and companies for financial support to operate the Teen Center.

In February, the organization was trying to raise $3 million for the Teen Center project.

Earlier this week, the Teen Center surfaced in a discussion among members of the City Council. They were .

But some elected officials wanted to receive more information about how the Teen Center project was progressing before considering taking the next step with the community aquatic center project. City Councilmembers also called the project's $64 million price tag expensive. 

As Mayor Don Gerend and others have noted, the city is seeing a growing number of young people.

In 2010, Sammamish had 14,763 residents who were under the age of 18 years old, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. That number is 32 percent of the city’s population of 45,780 people.

In comparison, a decade earlier, the city had 11,386 residents who were under the age of 18 years old. At the time, Sammamish had 34,104 people with the percentage of residents under that age similar to 2010.