Shaquille O’Neal takes photos with some of the kids at an event held at Mario C. & Joanne Monaco Middle School to unveil details of a future youth facility for the Northeast side in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday, July 10, 2024.
Thursday, July 11, 2024 | 5:06 p.m.
One of basketball’s all-time greats is helping bring a youth center to the northeast valley.
Shaquille O’Neal, through his Shaquille O’Neal Foundation, is the high-profile philanthropic force behind the center, which will be a joint facility for the Boys & Girls Club of Southern Nevada and Communities In Schools. The upcoming 17,000-square-foot facility will go on 4.8 acres formerly owned by the Clark County School District at the corner of Lamb Boulevard and Kell Lane.
Young O’Neal’s parents couldn’t afford a babysitter, so he spent his formative years at a Boys & Girls Club in Newark, N.J. His aunt worked at the clubhouse and saw to it that he was safe and there.
This is where he “cultivated the character known as Shaq,” he said at a news conference Wednesday at Monaco Middle School, which is about a mile from the future club and where that same day, O’Neal would dance and pass out backpacks full of school supplies to hundreds of local Boys & Girls Club members at a carnival in the gym.
“I love children. I’m 52 years old, very successful, did a lot of great things,” he said. “But the thing I love to do now is to make my mother proud.”
CCSD sold the plot of land, which is within sight of Cortez, Heard and Diaz elementary schools, to Clark County for $1 this spring. The county then donated it to the Shaquille O’Neal Foundation. The federal government chipped in $750,000 in community projects funds secured by Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., and $4 million in pandemic relief funds, by way of the state, to help build the club.
The completion date is to be determined, but the club is envisioned as a comprehensive clubhouse for infants through young adults. It will have a licensed childcare for babies and preschoolers, a Boys & Girls Club for youths ages 6-18, and a Communities In Schools “alumni center” for adults through age 24, all in the same place.
For the younger attendees, it will provide safe childcare, academic and social programming, and access to technology.
For older patrons, it will help them transition to adulthood with career development and job hunt resources, plus the chance to mentor children at the Boys & Girls Club, said Debbie Palacios, executive director of Communities In Schools of Nevada.
Andy Bischel, CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Southern Nevada, said the organization had been eyeing the piece of land, at 4400 Kell Lane, for years, knowing the school district wouldn’t develop it, since it already had three schools just across the street.
O’Neal sits on the national boards for both the Boys & Girls Club and Communities In Schools, a nationwide dropout prevention and social services program that is active around Nevada.
The Shaquille O’Neal Foundation has previously refurbished the basketball courts at the Doolittle Center in the Historic Westside and installed an artificial turf field at the Boys & Girls Club off Boulder Highway.
In the Monaco Middle School gym, after greeting the children Wednesday, O’Neal led them to repeat after him:
“I will,” he boomed, pausing every couple of words to hear the children repeat them, “become whatever I wanna become. I will be a leader and not a follower. I will. I will. I will.”
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