The Suffolk Youth Athletic Association was an idea that met reality 34 years ago, and an event on Saturday at the organization’s soccer/field hockey complex emphasized how realization of that idea has continued to grow.

SYAA founders, early board members and sponsors, as well as city councilmen and faithful volunteers, were on hand on Saturday at the grand opening of the organization’s newest building, located at 432 Kings Fork Road.

“We’re just proud to have been able to carry on the organization and the tradition that you’ve started,” SYAA treasurer and historian Geoff Payne said to the association’s founding members.

Two of them, Harry Cross III and Robert Gillette, later shared memories and insights into how SYAA came to be.

“We outgrew the facility across the road that Harry and Bob donated the land for, and we moved out here,” Payne said during his speech. “This was a peanut field, which actually Bob sold to us at a very attractive price, and see what we’ve done with it, Bob. Year by year, we’ve added fields, and finally after 13 years, we’ve added bathrooms.”

It took six years to plan and build the new facility, which has turned out bigger than originally planned.

“The process was, ‘Hey, we’ve got to build bathrooms,’ so we designed bathrooms,” Payne said after the grand opening ceremony had concluded. “We put a plan together, and then the board looked at it, and said, ‘Boy, is it going to cost that much? If we spend a bit more money, we can have more than bathrooms.’”

The building has ended up being a two-story structure. The second story includes a meeting room, which serves as a board room, an office that can also be another meeting room and a small storage area for things that cannot be stored in outside sheds.

On the first story, there is a large storage area and bathrooms.

While the majority of the funds that went into the creation of the building were raised in-house, 30 percent came through generous donations.

“None of this would be possible without the broad support of the whole community,” Payne said to Saturday’s gathering. “We couldn’t survive without the donations from the businesses, from the foundations in the area.”

After helping Gillette cut the ribbon on the new facility, Cross said, “It was just a real joyful event for me to come here and see this and see everybody playing,” as the day’s soccer games got under way around him.

Reflecting on the genesis of SYAA, Cross said, “Bob Gillette really was the one who had the vision and said we’re going to make this happen, and we were fortunate to recruit the right people to help us.”

Gillette enjoyed what the new building said about his and the other founders’ endeavor.

“What it really means is that one of the best things that we did was to start something that other people have bought into and have carried it on,” he said.