YMCA plans to build recreational facility in Kent

After years of behind-the-scene talks with city officials and residents, the YMCA is coming to Kent.

Mayor Suzette Cooke and YMCA leaders plan to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) within the next two weeks to build a $25 million recreational facility and pool. The YMCA will go up on the eastern side of what will be the city’s expanded Morrill Meadows Park along Southeast 248th Street, just east of 104th Avenue Southeast, City Parks Director Jeff Watling said at a City Council workshop on Tuesday.

“I just wanted to say thank you YMCA for joining with us in this project,” Councilwoman Deborah Ranniger said. “The impetus for this project has actually been around since 2002 when King County announced it was going to close and did close for a period of time the Kent Meridian Pool. We formed a small nonprofit that has been running the pool and we’ve been struggling to keep it open ever since knowing that we needed to really partner with someone to achieve the long-term goal of having an aquatics center and youth facility in Kent.”

It’s expected to take anywhere from three to five years before the new YMCA would open, said Nathan Phillips, YMCA regional director for South King County, during an interview after the meeting.

But the MOU will kick off the project with commitments from the city and YMCA about what they will do to get the facility built. The YMCA of Greater Seattle operates 12 facilities.

City officials still must purchase one more piece of property as they combine Morrill Meadows Park and the smaller East Hill Park just east of Morrill Meadows into one, 23-acre park. The YMCA would be built on about 4 or 5 acres on the eastern side of the property.

Meanwhile, the YMCA will begin a fundraising campaign to pay for the project. The main features of the facility will include a gym and a pool.

“We will have some corporate support but the overwhelming support will be from individuals,” said Bob Gilbertson, CEO of the YMCA of Greater Seattle, to the council. “I wouldn’t expect that companies will give more than about 10 percent of this project and 90 percent will come from individuals.”

Gilbertson described what he sees as far as the size of the facility.

“What I would expect at this stage of the game – and it might change a little bit as we go into this – that we would build something in the neighborhood that we built at SeaTac with more aquatics,” Gilbertson said. “That probably puts you in the range of 50,000 to 55,000 square feet. We hope we can bring this in at around $25 million.”

Councilman Jim Berrios said he wanted to make sure the YMCA will offer access to all.

“Part of the reason we are doing this is because there is a need,” Berrios said. “We have at-risk youth in the area that need a place to hang out and be more productive with their lives. … When we talk about the Y, there is a cost of membership but what are we going to do to address access for the youth?”

Phillips said the YMCA reaches out to people through a variety of programs.

“I look, for example, at our YMCA in SeaTac, and we try to make sure we have good access for the community to all of our facilities,” Phillips said. “We do that in a few ways, especially for young people. Almost all of our Y’s have programs for young people that are accessible to the general public.”

As far as membership prices, the nonprofit agency uses incomes to set those rates.

“We anticipate the Kent YMCA would be an income-based pricing YMCA so that we structure our pricing systems to make it available to as broad a spectrum of the public as possible,” Phillips said.

The city operates the aging Kent Meridian Pool on land owned by the Kent School District next to Kent-Meridian High School. Councilman Dennis Higgins asked Watling, the parks director, what role the school district might play in a YMCA facility and what might happen to the city pool.

“We will continue our conversations with the Kent School District,” Watling said. “We own the building, they own the land. We will communicate with them about what phasing out that facility looks like once this is built but also the programming and their level of involvement either from a capital standpoint or an operating standpoint for the future building.”

The Legislature helped kick start a new YMCA in Kent with a $500,000 contribution to the city this year for pre-construction costs. The state’s capital budget helps pay for infrastructure to maintain and construct public schools, higher education facilities, parks and other state and community assets. The closest YMCA facilities to Kent are the Auburn Valley YMCA and the Matt Griffin YMCA in SeaTac.

The YMCA formed a steering committee of Kent residents in 2013 to help figure out how to get a facility built in town.