NANAKULI — When the National Football League approached the Boys & Girls Club of Hawai'i about helping fund an after-school youth facility in the state, the organization's board members didn't take long to decide it should be in Nanakuli.

The NFL's 14 other Youth Education Town Centers were placed in poverty-stricken, at-risk neighborhoods. The economically depressed Nanakuli region, known for its homeless population as much as its tantalizingly blue shoreline, is no exception.

"It's a high poverty area and we face issues of drugs all along the (Wai'anae) coast," said Nanakuli resident and longtime Boys & Girls Club volunteer Patty Kahanamoku Teruya. "We have people who are homeless, without jobs, and crime."

Yesterday, local Boys & Girls Club leaders joined NFL officials at the groundbreaking of the Hawaii NFL Youth Education Town next to Nanaikapono Elementary School.

The $4.3 million first phase of the facility, expected to open in January 2009, is expected to include an arts and crafts center, a technology center and multimedia studio, teen center, community room and learning center. The second phase will include an outdoor amphitheater and native Hawaiian garden, and is expected to be done later next year.

"The last time we did a study ... there were like 33,000 young families here in this particular community," said club executive director David Nakada. "So you're looking at a large amount of kids."

Teruya said the clubhouse will give youths somewhere positive to go instead of heading home to an empty house or around the neighborhood where they could get into trouble.

"This (center) prepares our kids from 7 or 8 years old. We gotta touch them when they're young because once they're older, they no listen already. They're hardhead," said Teruya.

'SOMETHING TO DO'

Some of the young people who will be using the center expressed their excitement yesterday.

Jay-La Keiki, 11, a sixth-grader at Nanaikapono Elementary, said there are "lots and lots of games" for club members to participate in. Jay-La said the facility will be a huge benefit to the school. "There's nothing important (to do) after school," she said of the current situation.

"That's all we wanted, was to have something to do," said Taylor Tandal, 10, a fifth-grader who said she was looking forward to the kitchen and additional restrooms the new facility would bring.

Sixth-grader Johnnie-Lee Fernandez, who is 12, said she argued for, and got, an additional basketball court placed in the new center. Nanaikapono Elementary has courts, but never enough, Johnnie-Lee said, adding that someday she'd like to play professionally in the Women's National Basketball Association.

It's that kind of dream that the center hopes to foster.

DESIGN CONSULTANTS

For the first time, the club brought youths into the design process and the results were both fruitful and surprising, resulting in more than just a wish list of equipment, programs and other personal desires, officials said.

When architects first thought of putting the center's administrative office in the back of the building to be out of the way of activities, Nanaikapono students told the adults that the office should be in the front for security reasons.

"The kids said the administration, or the adults, should be near the entrance so that they can see who's coming in and out of the building," Nakada said.

The youths also submitted their own renderings of what they thought the center should look like and several of those drawings were on display at yesterday's groundbreaking ceremony.

The students, of course, did provide input into what they felt should be placed at the center.

The NFL is contributing the first $1 million toward the facility, which is on 1.6 acres owned by the state Department of Hawaiian Home Lands. The club obtained additional funding through federal and state grants, as well as private contributors. Major donors included the James Campbell Co. LLC, James and Abigail Campbell Family Foundation and Hawaiian Electric Co.

The Forever Young Foundation, a nonprofit set up by NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young to help needy youths, has agreed to pay for the multimedia center.

TOKEN OF APPRECIATION

The Nanakuli Youth Education Town will be different from the 14 other centers on the Mainland because it will be the only one not in a Super Bowl host city.

Frank Supovitz, NFL senior vice president, said the league decided to put the center in Hawai'i as thanks for a successful relationship it has had with the state.

"We felt that it was a great symbol of our ongoing friendship and commitment to the community," Supovitz said.

Sunday's AFC-NFC Pro Bowl at Aloha Stadium will be the 29th consecutive one to be played in Halawa.

The current contract between the NFL and the state is set to end after the 2009 Pro Bowl and the arrangement, which state tourism officials say brings invaluable exposure to the Islands, could end after that. But Supovitz said the center is not a farewell present, and added that negotiations to keep the Pro Bowl here are ongoing with the state.

Another unusual feature of the Hawai'i center is that it's certified under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, Green Building Rating System which encourages sustainable green building and development practices.

Said Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann, himself a former Boys & Girls Club member: "The Leeward Coast has always been blessed with outstanding athletes, with talented young people. All they need is an opportunity, all they need is exposure. All they need is for people and organizations to tell them 'you can make it, you can be somebody, you can dream big, and then give back to the community.'"

Reach Gordon Y.K. Pang at gpang@honoluluadvertiser.com.