Y Announces Mid-January Grand Opening for New Building

The long-awaited Healthy Living Center at the Marco YMCA is progressing steadily. But it may be the new year before Y members have full access to the building CEO Cindy Love calls the Y’s Crown Jewel. As it stands now, the building is almost complete.

“I would say it’s about 95 percent,” said John Riley, who heads up the Y’s fundraising efforts. “It’s hard to say on any given day. There are so many little details to be done, but they’re moving quickly and I can see it coming together. Every day it looks a little bit closer. I think we’ll be in there soon and enjoying it. We won’t look back once we get in. I’m ready to announce that we’ve confirmed January 13 as our grand opening date. We will start using the facility as soon as we can this fall. I’m certain that we will start using the facility before the grand opening. We may not have everything complete. It’ll be a work in progress for a little while, but it’ll start to benefit the community. There may be a few things to still figure out.”

Riley can’t hide his excitement for the project.

“I’m most excited about the social and wellness center for our older adults,” he said. “Just to have that dedicated space for programming for an underserved population. It’s a big space and it’s a population that has a lot of resources around here until you have a fall or until you lose a spouse, until you have a change in your medical condition or something like that. So what I’m excited about is really having a place inside and outside of this building for people to feel like they belong. They socialize and their programs are really designed for them. This building is for everybody in our community, but we have intentionally designed big spaces to put programming for our older adults.”

There will be plenty of oooh and ahhh moments for visitors visiting the Healthy Living Center for the first time.

“I just think the quality of construction, the amount of extra space, the flexibility. I think it is going to amaze people just what you can do in here, the number of programs that it lets us expand. Really, I think it is going to be amazing. We’re gonna have a much improved fitness center. New equipment, a bigger space. It’s going to feel better just because of higher ceilings, a better layout. I think it’s going to add a lot. I think people will be really excited about our fitness facilities here. We’ll have more room for group exercise as well. 

Riley said the back balcony and the front desk areas are stunners. 

“That beautiful balcony out there that overlooks the tennis and pickleball is a highlight,” Riley said. “Everybody is going to come through the lobby here as their main check-in point for the campus. This building will be the front door of the campus for our members and most of our adult participants. Our school-age kids will come in through the Youth Development Center as they have for several years now. Our early learning kids will go through the existing main lobby. Everyone else will come in through this building now and check in here. Whether you’re going to our aquatic center, our tennis center, our pickleball center, down to play basketball in the airnasium, you’ll come in through here. Even if you’re ,going into the older building to play basketball in the gym you’ll come in through this building. We’ll have indoor and outdoor seating in the shade with fans, places for people to watch pickleball and tennis. That balcony is a perfect place to watch the action along with the patio downstairs. It’s really a place where we hope people will come for a class or their workout and feel like they’re welcome to stay for hours if they like and socialize with their community.”

And though fundraising is right around the 90 percent range, Riley is hoping to reach their 100 percent goal.

“We are still looking for funding here,” Riley said. “We have a little less than $1 million to go to meet our full fundraising goal. We are getting ready to release another group of naming opportunities.”