San Pedro, Wilmington Boys and Girls Clubs join in partnership with AltaSea

In the latest partnership sealed for AltaSea, the Boys and Girls Clubs of LA Harbor has signed a long-term agreement to combine resources.

The first step, taken two weeks ago, is sharing administrative office space on the 10th floor of the building at 222 W. Sixth St., San Pedro.

With two locations in San Pedro and one in Wilmington — along with a presence at 10 school sites — the clubs’ administrators were scattered far and wide, said Kathleen Buczko, chief development officer for the club.

Finance personnel in San Pedro, for example, were working in a garage across the street from the clubs’ location on Cabrillo Avenue, Buczko said. “Marketing was in between the Wilmington and San Pedro (sites). It’s a big organization and we were grabbing as many little spaces as we could.”

Now, all nine of the clubs’ administrators have office space next to AltaSea in downtown San Pedro. After four years, the plan is to have all of those people, including the Boys and Girls Club administrators, move to the primary AltaSea site, in the works for the past four years, on the waterfront in San Pedro.

The partnership already has provided for workshops for youth, with classes housed in a double-wide modular building given to AltaSea by Green Hills Memorial Park. Some of the club members participated in workshops with Catalina Sea Ranch and famed deep-sea explorer Robert Ballard, whose vessel the Nautilus is based at AltaSea.

“They really love coming to the ocean and we’re doing a lot of things to not only show them that the ocean has all these benefits as a source of commerce today, but also in the future,” Buczko said.

Negotiations are ongoing also with The Boeing Co. to join in an AltaSea partnership.

Earlier this month, AltaSea and the Port of Los Angeles agreed to amend its original land lease in an effort to cut costs and speed up the time line to develop the marine research facility that has been called a potential “game changer” in revamping the LA Waterfront.