WESTFIELD – At the Westfield Planning Board’s Jan. 5 meeting, the board approved a special permit for the site plan for the proposed expansion of the Boys and Girls Club at 28 W. Silver St. and 21 S. Broad St.

Rob Levesque from R Levesque Associates jumped into the call to discuss the site plan for the expansion of the Boys and Girls Club and said little demolition was required for the project.

“Generally speaking, there is not a lot of demolition we need to do. We have the cooperation of the city of Westfield and the museum so we’re happy about that. We do have an area down by the skate park where we will need to take out some of the gravel,” he said.

One of the current omissions in the site plan is the design for the new playground, but Boys and Girls Club Chief Executive Officer Bill Parks said they are currently still designing it.

“We’re currently working with UltiPlay and we’re in the process of designing and putting it all together. As far as security, we will probably have the same type of lighting we currently have now, which would be wall packed units that keep it lit far enough out that we can have our security cameras out there,” he said.

With the Boys and Girls Club expanding, Parks said he has talked with leadership from the Amelia Park Children’s Museum about future collaboration.

“We recently had a meeting on Monday with the leadership from the museum discussing programmatic collaborations and the different program times and time slots we both are using. After our discussions, there were some good feelings regarding continued collaborations and trying to build a stronger relationship,” he said.

Planning Board Chair William Carellas said he had several general concerns about the overall expansion.

“I’m looking at this thinking that we are giving up an awful lot of land and that’s always been fields used for youth athletics. I’m also concerned about how the children’s museum being boxed in,” he said.

Parks addressed the concerns over the museum being boxed in and said they were already talking about helping the museum with their expansion plans and doing a solar study.

“One of their concerns was light into their building and we had a solar study done. The height of our building that we are putting up will not block any light from going into their building. In regards to future expansions there was some discussion about us working together to put an expansion in there,” he said.

He added that the athletic fields would not be affected.

“The spot where we’ll be building is never actually used, the only ones that have used it is usually the Boys and Girls Club,” Parks said.

After the presentation, the board unanimously approved the site plan for the Boys and Girls Club’s expansion with three conditions for angled parking, a sidewalk, and to comply with engineering in regard to drainage with the roadway.

The Westfield Planning Board next meets on Jan. 19.