In December 1996, just in time for a holiday party, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Baldwin County, a division of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Mobile, Inc., opened an 11,000-square-foot gymnasium/activities building in Fairhope. Although the organization had been operating in Baldwin County for three years, using vacated school buildings and other borrowed accommodations, this was the first building constructed expressly for the use of the club.
On June 26, 1997, that facility was renamed the Rotary Boys & Girls Club. The new name recognized the generosity of the Rotary Clubs of Fairhope and Point Clear, whose contributions would help the organization to retire the construction debt on the facility. The Rotary Club of Fairhope pledged $50,000 over three years, and the Point Clear club (then just a year and half old) donated $15,000. Gifts from numerous individual Rotarians brought the total to about $100,000.
Both clubs continued to support the youth club and tried to justify the use of “Rotary” in its name. In May 2009. The Boys & Girls Club of South Alabama notified the Fairhope Rotary Boys & Girls Club that they would be closing its facility. Due to the large need in our community for this program, the volunteers and staff of the Fairhope Rotary Boys & Girls Club decided to reorganize as the Fairhope–Point Clear Rotary Youth Programs, Inc. (“Rotary Youth Club”).
Although the City of Fairhope has provided considerable support to the Rotary Youth Club in numerous ways, area Rotary clubs (Fairhope, Point Clear, and now Fairhope Sunset) have continued to feel obligated to contribute to the club, both monetarily and with volunteers, and, as a result of grant proposals prepared by the Rotary clubs, the youth club has been the beneficiary of several grants from District 6880.