Washington seeks millions for new YMCA

WASHINGTON, Iowa - Across Iowa, YMCAs are upgrading and expanding as communities around them grow.

A downtown Des Moines Y opened last year. Council Bluffs is building a new facility. The Muscatine Y is raising money for an expansion. Marion could break ground this spring on a larger, new Y.

In Washington, the Y was built in 1924, remodeled in 1965 and expanded in 1973.

Becky Harkema, who has been executive director of the Washington County YMCA for the past three years, said the Y has the 'dubious distinction” of having the 'oldest or second-oldest continuously operated indoor swimming pool” in the nation.

'The second month I was here, the pool had a major structural issue with the main drain,” Harkema said. 'It was shut down for a month and that's when I said, ‘We can't have this. It's on its last legs.' ”

Since then, Harkema said the pool has been shut down twice more for a total of 14 weeks in a three-year period.

Aside from an outdated pool, the Washington facility has narrow hallways, small program spaces and a basement crowded with rusty pipes. The structure is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and it would cost $4 million just to do so.

Roles change

As the building has aged, the YMCA's offerings have grown, Harkema said. The Y not only focuses on physical health, but also social responsibility and youth development, including day-care services.

'The expectations have changed,” Harkema said. 'It's not just coming in and shooting baskets. We're really providing more things for the overall health of an individual.”

Harkema said she thinks the YMCA now serves as a 'second home” to a growing number of people.

'What that has caused is overcrowdingness, a need for up-to-date fitness equipment and program supplies,” she said.

Harkema said that's why a lot of YMCAs around the state are updating their facilities, regardless of age.

Day-care need

When Marion's YMCA was built in 1963, the city was home to about 12,000 residents. Now, 36,000 people live there and the Y is looking to grow as well.

The population in Washington, on the other hand, has been pretty stable, according to Ed Weeks, co-chairman of the campaign working to build a new YMCA in town.

'What's changed is that Kalona and Riverside have grown quite a bit,” he said. The county has gone from serving 1,795 members in 2009 to 3,203 in 2015. It also serves 4,440 non-members, Harkema said.

Co-chairwoman Rachel Nicola said 25 percent of the area workforce now commutes to Johnson County, which has increased the demand for some of the YMCA's services.

'It becomes very significant for young parents for day-care options if they are going to be leaving early and coming back late,” she said.

The need for after-school options also has grown. Older children have few areas to roam in the Washington Y, aside from a small game room. The gym barely has enough room to accommodate a volleyball net; the acoustics are bad; and on a recent afternoon, middle schoolers were turned away from playing basketball while toddlers played. The heating and air-conditioning system is not centralized, and there is a lack of insulation in some places, so some rooms are colder than others.

'Anyone who comes in this building can see it's suffering from some real structural problems at this point,” Nicola said. 'I was on the board about a decade ago and we were admitting at that point that we're just putting Band-Aids over problems, and we have to do something.”

The Washington County Y is trying to raise $10.8 million for a new facility, Weeks said.

'It looks like Mount Everest to us,” Nicola said.

Casino chips in

In November, the Washington County Riverboat Foundation helped move the campaign past the halfway mark with a $3.5 million pledge, the largest grant in its history.

The location selected for the new Y is part of a wellness area, which will encompass sports fields and a walking trail, Nicola said.

'The new Y building is seen by both the city and the Y leadership as an anchor for that park,” Nicola said.

That 4-acre location on W. Fifth Street is five blocks from the center of downtown, as opposed to the current site, a block and a half away from the center of downtown.

'There's a lot of sentimental attachment to this building by older members of the community,” Nicola said. 'The board seriously looked into the cost of trying to either rehab this building or build new in this location, but when you add up the cost not only of demolition, but placing the programs somewhere else during the building phase, the cost just doubled, tripled. And that's not a good use of community resources, we thought.”

Weeks and Nicola, who are Washington natives, said they have a lot of fond memories of the Y building. Weeks said his first job was as a 14-year-old desk clerk at the Y, where he earned 60 cents an hour in 1961.

'We learned to swim here, we played in the gym, played baseball and all those programs were run by the Y,” Weeks said. 'A lot of good memories, but we have to move on,” he said.