Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette A giant check held by Pirates CEO Kevin McClatchy catches the attention of children at the Shadyside/East Liberty Boys & Girls Club yesterday in Shadyside. The children are, from left, Maurice Miller, 9; Shelby Finch, 7; Laurel Page, 6; and Russell Kyle, 6.

The pool at the Shadyside Boys & Girls Club, which has been unusable for the past five years, soon will be filled and turned into an indoor baseball training complex.

The Pirates announced yesterday that the project would be the first for a new arm of the organization, Pirates Charities.

"We've been active in the community for a long time, but we felt that refocusing our charitable efforts and rebranding them was something we wanted to take a look at," Pirates CEO Kevin McClatchy said.

Instead of working through other organizations, the Pirates will support charitable causes directly through Pirates Charities. McClatchy said the group will place an emphasis on youth fitness, education and health.

There already are big plans for the Boys & Girls Club project. The new training complex will feature batting cages, multi-media training rooms, coaches' offices and pitching machines.

"We've already got the four walls, so we'll be able to start going pretty fast," said Mike Hepler, CEO of the Boys & Girls Club of Western Pennsylvania. He said the group would like to open the complex by the end of September.

Currently, the building is dilapidated and not used. Construction will be handled by Kimball and Associates, which will demolish and renovate the interior. The cost of the project is estimated at $300,000.

When the project is finished, Hepler said the building would become a facility used by all nine Boys & Girls Clubs in the area as well as by the Roberto Clemente Foundation.

"This is going to be tremendous in terms of moving our program forward," Chuck Berry, president of the Clemente Foundation, said.

The two groups serve 600 baseball-playing children, but the new facility will be able to support between 2,000 and 3,000 children each year.

"This place is going to be going non-stop," Hepler said.

The new complex will be renamed the Pirates Community Baseball Center, and will serve as the home of the Clemente Foundation's Reviving Baseball in the Inner City program as well as the Boys & Girls Club Baseball program.

The Clemente Foundation is donating $75,000 toward the project, and the Baseball Tomorrow Fund is contributing $60,000, with the rest being donated by Pirates Charities.

McClatchy said it was a great first project for Pirates Charities, because the area does not have an indoor baseball or softball facility.