By Rebecca B. Gedda

If you've never gone to Tepee, the teen center on Main Street , chances are pretty good that you're either over the age of 65 or you didn't grow up in Collinsville .

Tepee opened in 1955. In that time, the center has seen thousands of Collinsville-area teens come through its doors for supervised dancing, game playing, and socializing.

But lately, Tepee has begun to show its age.

"We were having a problem with water coming in through the foundation and ruining the downstairs of the building," said Tepee Board President Mike Hasamear. "Ever since we got rid of our flat roof and had a gabled one put on we've had these problems."

But when representatives from Woods Basement Systems, a Collinsville waterproofing business, heard about the problems at Tepee, they decided to do everything they could to make sure that future generations of Collinsville teens would be able to continue to enjoy the facility as much as they had in the past.

"When we called and told (Rick) Woods (the owner of the waterproofing business) about the problems we were having, he volunteered his company to come out and help us out," Hasamear said. "We didn't solicit this help — it was completely donated."

Presently the company is digging around the foundation of the building, laying rock, and installing a drainage system that will keep the moisture - and future damage - away from the walls of the teen center's basement.

Dave Thompson, marketing specialist at Woods Basement Systems, said assisting in the community is one particular facet the company likes best.

"Tepee is such a good cause," he said.

Hasamear said Woods told him that if he were to charge for the cost of the work, the amount would come close to $6,000.

"But he said that he had been in the community for a number of years, and that he knew about the great things we do for kids, and so he said he wanted to donate both the time and the materials for this project," he said.

Thompson said that the estimate for the work would be closer to $5,500.

"But this project has required more that we'd originally anticipated," he said. "It's become a pretty big job."

But Hasamear said waterproofing is just one of many projects that Tepee representatives plan to complete before the center opens its doors for the season on the weekend of September 28.

"We always close for the summer, because kids have a lot more opportunities and things to do when school's out," Hasamear said. "This summer, while the kids were out of school, we wanted to get this waterproofing done, do some work in the basement, and get some landscaping done.

"But we didn't want to start any of that until the waterproofing was done," he said. "This was the key to all of those repairs."