The Old Overton Gym will be holding its fourth annual Old-Time Carnival on Friday, October 28 from 5:00-8:00 p.m. This family-friendly event is the only annual fundraiser held by the Old Gym board of directors to support the operating expenses of the historic facility.
Geared toward young children, the carnival includes game booths with prizes, a community bake sale and a chili and frito pie dinner. This year the event adds a kid-friendly spook alley put on by students from the Mack Lyon Middle School.
The Old Overton Gym is a non-profit organization with the goal of providing a gathering place for community activities and of preserving the historic building.
Over the past year, the Old Gym board has continued its ongoing efforts to restore the building to its former glory. Working with funding from a Nevada Commission for Cultural Affairs (NCCA) grant, the board restored the gym’s front-facing windows to their original state.
“At some point, during a planned demolition of the building, the old steel windows were torn out,” Green said. “When the building was restored and put back into service a few years ago, the missing steel windows were replaced with vinyl windows. .”
Since that time, the building has been added to the Register of Historic Places on both the state and national levels, Green said. As such, the Gym had received the generous NCCA grant in the 2008-2009 cycle.
“It was important to (the NCCA) that we use that funding to replicate things on the building as close as we could to the original status,” Green said.
The new steel windows were costly. To restore the four front windows was around $16,000.
Also part of this project was to install 1930s-style lighting fixtures on either side of the front door. The board also refinished the front door itself to repair some recent vandalism.
With these things, and previous restoration projects, the 2008 NCCA grant is now all spent, Green said. And it is unlikely any further restoration grant funding will be coming any time soon. State budget cuts have put a halt to that grant program for the foreseeable future, Green said.
“We are now all done with our government funding,” she said. “We are just down to the money we raise in this fundraiser.”
Over the past few years, Clark County grants have funded just enough to hire one part time employee to look over the facility. The board has applied for that grant again for the coming year. But those grants have not yet been announced.
“The county has been very generous to us and other local organizations over the years,” Green said. “We still have hopes that those funds will come in.”
But all other funds for the operation of the building must be raised in the community. “This event is a reminder to the community that we all need to help in funding it,” Green said. “It is our building; not the board’s building but the community’s building. And there is no way that we can do it without memberships.”
The Old Overton gym offers Century Club membership to residents of the community for $100 per year. These members are then given a significant discount in scheduling their own events in the facility throughout the year.
Friday’s carnival will open the upcoming year’s membership drive. Those who become new Century Club members or renew their membership will be given a free dinner at the event.
