The former Boys and Girls Club in McKees Rocks is getting a major facelift.<\/p>\n
The Josh Gibson Foundation is planning to turn it into a new youth sports center, and a pledge to match funding is now helping those efforts.<\/p>\n
For Rick Jordan and company at the DICK’s Sporting Goods Foundation, it’s an opportunity for a clean slate.<\/p>\n
The building at the site of the former Boys and Girls Club will be torn down, and the new facility will be built.<\/p>\n
The DICK’s Foundation and the Josh Gibson Foundation said the facility will have a gym, community spaces, and a Miracle League Baseball field, which allows disabled adults and kids to play baseball.<\/p>\n
It will also have a learning lab with computers when completed.<\/p>\n
The DICK’s Foundation says it’ll match up to $2 million in funding.<\/p>\n
“We were looking for a space, a place, a community within Pittsburgh for us to give back in a meaningful way,” Rick Jordan, vice president of the DICK’s Foundation, said.<\/p>\n
Jordan said it is meaningful in more ways than just dollars. He said the location is close to DICK’s corporate office, allowing it to be involved in ways other than finances. The Josh Gibson Foundation says this will fill a void in McKees Rocks.<\/p>\n
“When the boys and girls club closed down, there was no community center within this area,” Sean Gibson, executive director of the Josh Gibson Foundation, said.<\/p>\n
By giving people a space to grow, they hope to carry on Josh Gibson’s legacy. Gibson played for the Pittsburgh Crawfords and the Homestead Grays.<\/p>\n
Gibson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.<\/p>\n
“We’re going to serve as youth adults, senior citizens, and disabled in this community, and not just in this community, around this community,” Sean Gibson said.<\/p>\n
There’s no specific timeline yet for when this project will be finished.<\/p>\n
The Josh Gibson Foundation and the DICK’s Foundation said they’re hoping that the announcement will kickstart more donations for this project.<\/p>\n
\n More from CBS News\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former Boys and Girls Club in McKees Rocks is getting a major facelift. The Josh Gibson Foundation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19859,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[3313,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-19858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-mckees-rocks","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}