Residents share desires for possible YMCA pool

DePauw University Vice President for Finance Andrea Young, a member of the Community Collaboration Initiative grant leadership team, calls on an audience member for remarks as Elevatus Architecture architect Tom Salzer checks his notes during the Wednesday night public meeting on the possibility of a pool at the new Putnam County YMCA facility.

Banner Graphic/ERIC BERNSEE

With snow on the ground and below-zero windchills in the air, the hottest topic in town Wednesday evening was the possibility of a swimming pool being included at the new Putnam County YMCA.

During a public forum at the Inn at DePauw more than 75 people shared ideas on what they would like to see in a community pool, ranging from warm water family pool availability to a ramped pool entry to a dry sauna.

The YMCA, under construction on Greencastle’s East Side, just east of the Walmart Supercenter off the southern extension of Calbert Way, is currently designed without a pool. Nonetheless, an area has been set aside where a pool could easily be added to the $28 million project that is expected to be completed by the end of 2024.

However, a pool is only likely to happen if the community is awarded a $25 million Lilly Endowment College and Community Collaboration Initiative grant. Before the possibility of the Lilly grant arose recently, city officials had dismissed a pool within the YMCA as too costly to build and too expensive to maintain. The grant leadership team from the city and DePauw University has identified incorporation of an indoor pool into the Putnam County YMCA facility as one of the projects that may be included in the Lilly Endowment grant proposal.

The city and DePauw are using a $250,000 planning grant awarded from the Lilly Endowment Initiative to develop a plan to address infrastructure needs within the city of Greencastle related to housing, recreation, education and aesthetics. In the spring, the Lilly Endowment will be accepting applications for up to $25 million to support projects that result from these planning grants.

Wednesday night community members and civic leaders shared their thoughts in a meeting presided over by Tom Salzer, of Elevatus Architecture, Ft. Wayne, and Andrea Young, DePauw vice president for finance and member of the grant leadership team. It was an interesting night with the audience definitely skewed toward middle-age and older residents and expressing dreams for what the community could have in essentially spending someone else’s money.

Young told the group that a $25 million grant award from Lilly would represent 30 percent of an overall project, adding that the “$100 million project more or less would impact all of us.” She urged the audience that the committee has been “loud and clear about the desire to consider the feasibility of a pool at the YMCA.”

That comment was greeted by cheers and applause, motivating Young, who resides in Greencastle, to add, “as a swimmer, it excites me as well.”

Salzer, in providing a QR code (at slido.com) for those with smart phones to vote on their top three priorities, talked about what might be included with having a competition pool that the schools could use for meets and practices.

“If so, do we want spectator seating?” he asked. “Would the seating be elevated?”

A competition pool would also impact locker room design where there would be athletic locker rooms, community locker rooms and family locker rooms, keeping teenage competitors and older residents there for lap swim or water aerobics from having to co-mingle.

“Frankly,” Salzer said, “so that the athletes don’t overwhelm the membership.”

For example, he added, if there were 100 swimmers on hand for a competition, “there would be no place for the community to change clothes” without separate locker facilities.

A warm water family pool concept, he added, might include splash features, making the experience more comfortable for youngsters learning how to swim, while physical therapy additions could include jets to swim against and parallel bars that can be removed after use. Steam rooms are also possible.

Some of the issues, Salzer noted, include that those who want a warm water public pool don’t want to have to swim against high school teams at the same time. Those wanting a lap swim pool don’t want to have to compete for time with competitive swimmers.

“We’re not necessarily discussing a competition pool,” Salzer said, “just asking if it is wanted.”

After several members of the audience offered specific needs and ideas a little too detailed for this portion of the discussion, City Councilman Darrel Thomas interjected, “Months from now this is going to look different.”

“Give it a chance to build,” he added, instead of “we’ve got to have this or there’s got to be that.”

Salzer said he was not there to design a pool but “to help with the community engagement piece,” adding that nothing will go forward without the grant from Lilly. “We have not started the design and won’t until we get the Lilly grant.”

Young concurred. “This is the first of many conversations about what this will look like once we get the grant from Lilly,” she responded.

Prior to the grant decision, however, there will not be any further public comment sessions, Salzer said.

The architect asked audience members to raise their hands is they were “interested in a community pool where you can swim laps year-round.” Fifty-five people responded.

Young, saying she was using the “draft name” Putnam County Natatorium for the pool venture, told those in the room, “If your feedback is ‘no pool,’ give us that feedback too.”

And Main Street Greencastle Executive Director and former city councilman Russell Harvey did.

“I’m not necessarily against the pool,” Harvey said, suggesting he had some concerns, indicating “we don’t really know how successful the ‘Y’ is going to be. It’s fairly far out of town and there is a cost to it.”

“We’re talking about a lot of money with this Lilly grant,” he continued. “We’ve got a lot of things we need in this community. I personally worry about dumping money in a pool or a ‘Y,’ when we have other needs.”

As far as the accessibility goes, Harvey pointed out that 50 percent of students in Greencastle schools are on free or reduced lunches.

“Are all families going to be able to access this?” he asked, adding that he fears the pool would “divert grant money from other projects.”

“We have a downtown that looks rough,” Harvey said, adding that there are “spaces wildly in need of improvement. I think of those spaces as opposed (to a pool).”

A former YMCA and Boys and Girls Clubs director, Scott Monnett shared some of his experiences with the group. Now the executive director of Family Support Services of West Central Indiana, Monnett said there is “no more polarizing subject in a YMCA than a pool. We’re not going to get everything we want in one pool. If we did, the pool would be 96 percent of the YMCA.”

As far as the $25 million grant being 30 percent of an overall project, Young was asked where the rest of the funding would come from. How those additional funds will be generated is part of what has to be submitted to Lilly once a grant is received.

She noted that the possibilities include a private equity developer, an entity that might taken on debt for the project or public organizations.

“We have identified the other funding sources,” she assured, adding that she was not going to make those sources public at this time.

Meanwhile, Salzer shared that ramps into pool have become “a really popular and more important item,” replacing ladders and lifts.

Conversely, pool slides are being eased out by YMCAs.

“We’re not really promoting a slide,” Salzer said, adding “there used to be slides in all YMCAs” but they are being phased out because they “became a lifeguarding nightmare.”

And how about sauna rooms?

“We’re currently considering a dry sauna,” Salzer said. “There’s potentially room for a spa,” although spas are difficult to keep clean “and most YMCA operators are getting out of the spa business.”

Salzer told the assembled group that “what we see is YMCAs that have a pool find a way to keep them busy all the time.”

One YMCA he has worked with “went as far as putting kids in the water in floaties and showing the movie ‘Jaws’ and daring them to stay in the water.”

Summarizing his thoughts on the night, Salzer said “we would like nothing better for this community than to build nine pools. But we have to figure out a way to maximize the funding.

“The cost is really just a size game,” the architect added, declining to put a price on the pool envisioned for Greencastle. “Pools are wildly expensive. If one pool is X, then two pools are usually 2X. Costs get up there pretty quickly.”