The opening of a new teen center in Indio has been halted indefinitely until the Boys & Girls Club of the Coachella Valley can raise the money to hire staff for it.

Construction of the 3,000-square- foot Smilow Family Teen Center wrapped up in October but the Boys & Girls Club has raised less than 10 percent of the $175,000 to hire staff and fill the facility with equipment, said Jim Ducatte, chief executive officer.

“We are in a tough economy and so we have not been able to finalize everything that we needed to in order to open the teen center,” Ducatte said.

The Boys & Girls Club had $2.3 million to build the Smilow Family Teen Center next to the John Carrol and Jim O'Brien Boys & Girls Club building, Ducatte said.

That funding came from community donations, a $455,000 grant from the state's parks department, and a large donation from the family members of Joel Smilow, who are winter residents of Indian Wells.

When the construction wrapped up in mid-October, Ducatte decided not to open the building because the Boys & Girls Club could not staff it, he said.

“We hoped that while we were building the building that we would raise enough funds to open it and operate it,” Ducatte said. “At this point, we have not reached our goal.”

Ducatte said he hopes to have the building open in at least four months when the money has been raised. A fundraising committee was formed a couple of weeks ago to develop fundraising events, he said.

“We are looking at everything that we could possibly do,” he said.

In the meantime, the Boys & Girls Club will continue to have its teen programs, and will stay open an extra hour, especially for the teens.

The programs will be held at the group's Indio clubhouse, Indio unit director Tracy Reed said.

“The teens were just excited about the building being open,” Reed said, “but we are just going to keep the programs going for them.”

Theo Brown, 18, said he was disappointed the building did not open when it was supposed to.

“I think they should have probably put it out there that they needed help to hire the staff and maybe more people would have donated,” he said.

Brown said he is willing to do anything to help out the Boys & Girls Club raise the money to open the teen center.