YMCA plans $30 million in renovations, upgrades focused on facilities for kids, families
The Greater Wichita YMCA is embarking on expansions and renovations that it says will improve facilities and programs for youth and children.
The changes include a revamped Early Learning Center at the South YMCA, 3405 S Meridian Ave., and the addition of new turf fields near the Northwest YMCA, 13838 West 21st Street North. The Greater Wichita YMCA also plans to buy Camp Hiawatha, a 42-acre camp on West 51st St. North near the Little Arkansas River, from the Salvation Army to offer more programs and camps for families and youth.
“Our Y is fortunate to be kind of one of the premiere Y systems in the country, and we’re just really excited to continue to reinvest in our model,” said Greater Wichita YMCA President and CEO Ronn McMahon. “We’re gonna invest primarily in the youth side, focusing on early learning, youth sports and day camp.”
“We just recently received a $30 million IRB funding,” McMahon said. “We just wanted the community to know, that supports us, that ‘Hey, you know, when you support the Y, it gets reinvested in the community in the form of new assets.’”
The Wichita City Council approved a letter of intent to issue $30 million in industrial revenue bonds for the projects last month. That subsidy will give the YMCA a tax break on construction materials. The Y will have to pay back the $30 million but the IRB financing allows the nonprofit to pay lower interest rates.
Of the $30 million, roughly $25 million would be directed at construction costs, while the rest would be split between construction management, design, equipment and bond issuance cost. Most of this funding would be used for the Northwest and South YMCA projects.
Renovations will begin in October with improvements to the Richard A. DeVore South YMCA’s Early Learning Center. The child care center will be renovated and expanded to increase its capacity.
The rest of the South YMCA will be renovated as well, McMahon said.
The Early Learning Center offers day care Monday through Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. for children in pre-school or younger. Children must be at least two weeks old to attend the ELC.
The center has 63 children enrolled, said Shamain Bachman, vice president of marketing for the Greater Wichita YMCA. The goal of the expansion is to remove the need for a wait list.
“We know that child care ties directly into the important community issue of workforce development. Greater availability of child care choices benefits everyone,” Bachman said in an email.
The Early Learning Center should be completed around May, with the other projects wrapping up by the end of 2024, McMahon said.
Across 21st Street from the Ken Shannon Northwest YMCA, 26 acres have been bought for turf fields for youth sports facilities.
The land also will be used for construction of “parking and playgrounds and other amenities to create sort of a youth sports complex to add to the Northwest YMCA, which is kind of one of the busiest Ys in the country,” McMahon said.
“There’s lots of new rooftops going out there, so we want to make sure that we’re ready for the continued growth of that YMCA,” he said.
This construction coincides with the expiration of a multi-year partnership the YMCA had with Maize after investing in turf fields for the Maize school district.
“That partnership is ending here next year, and so we were sort of forced our hand, but turned that into a positive by increasing our capacity, building more turf, so we’ll have fields for flag football, for baseball, obviously for soccer, followed with other amenities,” McMahon said.
Bachman added that the YMCA will also renovate fitness spaces, family areas and the Kid Zone at the Northwest Y as part of the project.
The Greater Wichita YMCA also plans to acquire Camp Hiawatha.
“We haven’t quite closed on it, but we will,” McMahon said of the camp. He added they hope to build on the legacy created by the Salvation Army.
“We can add family camps and specialty camps, all kinds of overnight, because there’s overnight capacity that we didn’t have before. So we think that just allows us to do even more important work with our kids, and really we’ll be able to do it all year round with that camp,” he said. “Hopefully by next summer we’ll be operating, offering day camp out of Camp Hiawatha as one more opportunity for kids to make friends, be active, educational opportunities, all those types of things.”
Also underway is the reconstruction of the Andover YMCA after it was destroyed by a tornado last year. This facility is expected to reopen in 2024 and is not financed by the $30 million for Wichita projects.
“The Dr. Jim Farha Andover YMCA water park opened this summer with a new look and feel, and the building is in the process of being transformed,” Bachman said in an email.
Bachman also said a fundraising campaign is underway at the Hutchinson YMCA to renovate its facilities, “along with a state-of-the-art aquatics center and new and improved family center.”
McMahon said the Greater Wichita YMCA hopes to use these renovations to foster the Y’s tenets of achievement, relationship and belonging in the local youth and community.
