Ground broken for new Boy Scout service center

by Bryan Smith

SBJ Staff

Be prepared. A new Boy Scouts building is coming to Springfield.

Ozark Trail Council No. 306 broke ground for its new service center June 26. The center will be located on Eastgate Avenue, north of Reliable Toyota.

The council plans to name the building after a donor, but the name is yet to be announced. However, the council did say that the grounds will be named after John A. Morris.

Morris' family was one of four that donated the grounds to the Boy Scouts. Other donors included the E.C. Curtis family, the L.B. Billingsly family and Mark and Michael Pike.

The center will be more than 10,000 square feet with an unfinished basement area half that size. The building will be located on approximately eight acres of land.

It will include a history museum, a store where scouts can buy uniforms and other supplies, council offices and three conference rooms.

"This will be a full-functioning service center," said Denise Eldred, who serves as the council's development director.

Eldred said the group hopes to move from its current facility on South Kimbrough to the new building by June 2000.

Scout Executive Dean Ertel said the council has raised more than $4 million and hopes to raise another $1 million for a "three-pronged project" that includes improvements to two scout campgrounds.

"It is not just for the building," Ertel said. "Roughly $650,000 will be spent at Camp Childers, and the same amount will be spent at Camp Arrowhead."

The improvements at Camp Childers, located in Diamond, involved making changes to accommodate more scouts. According to Ross Ausburn, the chair of the capital campaign committee, this came as a result of a merger between the Ozark Trails Council and the MoKan Council in Joplin.

"It became obvious after the merger that we didn't have the infrastructure to support 11,000 kids and their families," Ausburn said.

Camp Arrowhead improvements include the addition of a handicapped camping area. The camp is located in Marshfield.

The project is the result of four years of work by the council to find a new home. Charles Hill, who serves on the capital campaign committee and the building committee, said the council began searching for sites in the fall of 1995, first going through real estate agencies.

"We really didn't find anything that met the requirements we were looking for," Hill said. "We were looking for a wooded site with good access to highways."

The council found the land on Eastgate in the summer of 1996.

Hill and Paul Melgren, both of Gaskin Hill Norcross Architects, began creating designs for the project after they found the property.

Hill said they wanted to design the building with four main functions in mind: offices, a supply store, a training center for adult leaders and a museum detailing scouting in the Ozarks.

But the two kept the essence of the Boy Scouts program in mind as they designed the building.

"The vehicle the Boy Scouts have always used is nature," Hill said. "We want (the building) to be modern with a rustic motif."

Hill and Melgren are keeping nature in the project by adding an area to study the outdoors on the grounds.

The area will comprise a trail around the grounds and a pond which will be used for studying aquatic life.

The building will serve a council that comprises 28 counties in Missouri and three in Kansas. Scout troops from Rolla, Joplin and Baxter Springs, Kan., will have access to the facilities.

In addition, scouts from councils in other areas, such as St. Louis and Kansas City, will be able to access the center.

"We'll be helping and benefiting not just our own council, but other councils," Eldred said.

Enrollment in the Ozark Trails Council stands at 11,000. Ertel said he hopes that number will increase with the addition of the service center.

"If you have the facilities and the staffing for the job, you can turn around and help a lot more kids," Ertel said.

[[In-content Ad]]