Pensacola can spend $49K to tear down Malcolm Yonge Gym or $200K to study if it can be saved

Attempting to determine the true cost of saving the Malcolm Yonge Gym will be more than four times the cost of demolishing the building.

Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves said last week that initial estimates to do a true structural analysis of the building will likely come close to $200,000. Reeves said he would ask the City Council to reconsider moving forward with an assessment in January.

Half of the estimated cost is to install structural supports to make the building safe enough so the actual inspection can take place, Reeves said.

"We have a demo price of about $49,000," Reeves said. "We're already at $200,000 to even just assess what we've already seen."

Why was the demolition halted?

For the last several months, the fate of the Malcolm Yonge Gym appeared sealed, with the city moving toward demolition of the building and the city's Community Redevelopment Agency planning to build between 14 and 30 affordable housing units on the property.

However, when the contract to demolish the building came up for a vote earlier this month, it was met with outcry from supporters of James B. Washington Education and Sports Inc., a nonprofit basketball and after-school tutoring program, arguing there was a cheaper construction technique that could save the building for as little as $165,000 and a desperate need for indoor gym space for youth basketball.

The City Council, meeting as the CRA board, decided to delay tearing down the building and instead authorized the mayor to conduct a full structural assessment of the building.

The issue has been the first real pushback from the City Council to the Reeves administration since he took office in November 2022.

What happened to the Malcolm Yonge Gym?

It's not the first time the Malcolm Yonge Gym has given a mayor headaches. During Mayor Grover Robinson's term, the city attempted to surplus the building to sell it on the private market and free up $700,000 budgeted for capital improvements for the gym.

The City Council pushed back against the idea, but the money was reallocated as Lighthouse Private Christian Academy leased the building from the city with the requirement to spend at least $25,000 a year on maintenance for the building.

The 1961 building's main structural support is a series of wooden arches that give the building its distinct shape. The more than 62-year-old wood holding the building up has been damaged, with clear evidence of water or termite damage visible at the base of the structures.

When the state of the building was brought to Reeves' attention after taking office, he ordered the gym closed and a $30,000 initial assessment conducted on the building. Lighthouse's lease on the building was canceled.

The initial assessment found the building unsafe but recommended a full structural assessment to determine the full extent of the damage.

Reeves said in conversations with city officials, the engineers who did the initial assessments gave unofficial estimates that the cost to repair the building would be north of $1 million.

Reeves decided in the midst of an affordable housing crisis it made more sense to demolish the building and put the land to better use for housing. The city also has plans to move forward with opening a Children's Resource City, which will add another indoor basketball court for public use.

During the CRA meeting in December, members of the council seized on the fact that the estimate to restore the building was not in any official report.

"If there was some conversation in another room about a dollar value (to save the building), I wasn't privy to that," Councilman Jared Moore said at the Dec. 11 meeting. "It's not in the report that I've received, so I can only act upon the information that I have before me."

What comes next?

Reeves said he respects the checks and balances the City Council provides, but in this case, the end result will be a five- to six-month delay to end up right back where they are at this point.

In the conversations Reeves said he has had at this point, the alternative construction technique proposed by the Washington Education and Sports supports will not work because the wooden arches are too far gone.

"(The Washington Education and Sports proposal) makes a lot of assumptions that those beams aren't too far gone," Reeves said. "Some of those beams (it appears) that they are, and if you go out there right now, you can see through them. There's literally a hole in the wood. You can see all the way through. Those would not be able to be fixed by that mechanism that was proposed."

Despite already having authorization for a full structural assessment, Reeves said he plans to go back to the City Council in January and present the $200,000 cost estimate for the assessment and request another vote on how to proceed.

"I think it's financially prudent for me to bring this back to CRA and really make sure that they're OK with it," Reeves said. "Because I would say personally, if it was only my decision on that, I don't think it's financially feasible to spend more than $200,000 to figure out something that I think we already know."

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Pensacola City Council to weigh Malcolm Yonge Gym assessment