Would Brown County residents desire a YMCA? That’s what the City of Early is asking through a Needs Assessment Survey being conducted right now.
You can fill out the survey through THIS LINK.
The survey is also available on the City of Early Facebook page or on flyers at various places around the county, just use the QR code on the flyer.
KOXE News sat down with Early City Administrator, Tony Aaron, and discussed a potential YMCA being located in the Early Town Center, now being developed.
It’s not just about the City of Early, but about Brown County as a whole. A facility like this is for everybody. You don’t have to live in the city of Early to fill out that survey. Basically, we are gauging the community, the voters interest, in having a YMCA, youth recreational facility here. And if we were to have one, what do they feel like the YMCA in Brown County is going to look like? What type of amenities is that going to be? What’s important to us? Everything from after school programs to child care facilities, senior programs, rehabilitative services in the way of exercise, stretching and swimming and then recreational things. The YMCA is big about saying ‘if you’ve seen one YMCA, you’ve seen one YMCA’, because they mirror what the community wants them to be.
Aaron explains how the idea of a YMCA started.
How this all got started, I started visiting with David Hendricks at the Abilene YMCA, he’s the director over there, about being involved in the Early Town Center and our project that was going on. A lot of people have mentioned there’s not enough for youth to do, that there’s not enough recreation or safe places for people or young kids to hang out, so that kind of became a battle cry, if you would, of the community to start looking at. We’ve been visiting with him for a while. We’ve actually toured the Abilene YMCA, we went down and toured Cedar Park, Hutto and Round Rock. We’ve got a good understanding as to how the “Y” operates and what that vision may start to develop for Brown County. They were really interested in being in the Town Center because of the park proximity, the lake, the potential for kayaking and canoeing, outdoor water activities associated with the YMCA, as well as indoor stuff.
What is the plan?
The process which we are doing right now is the City of Early is taking the lead in conducting that needs assessment for Brown County while the Abilene YMCA is doing a market analysis. What that means is they are trying to analyze Brown County and go, if the needs being cried out by the community are met, what will be the annual cost to operate that? How many memberships do we need to have? What’s our ongoing costs? Ultimately, when the partnership comes together, depending on who all are stakeholders in the partnership, it’s a cost sharing measure. Typically, the way a YMCA works, is a local entity, whether it’s a municipal government, county government, school district or a combination thereof, builds the facility and owns the facility and the YMCA leases it and operates it for a term of a lease. At the point that relationship doesn’t continue on or whatever, the facility goes back to the local ownership of it being the city, or county or coalition. We’ve got all those agreements still to work out. Each YMCA is run by its own board of directors.
What else should people need to know about this proposed project?
Some other things that are kind of important for people to understand is the capital campaign that will come from this. We’re still developing what that capital campaign looks like. Lets say Brown County overwhelming supports this, we really want to have a YMCA, let’s start talking about costs. By determining what amenities would fit for Brown County, then we start understanding the square footage of the facility, the amenity cost that’s going to be in there and so we can start coming up with a dollar amount. Right now, we have some speculations but I can’t tell you if it’s going to be a million or ten million. Those will come from – does Brown County want an indoor pool? – do they want an outdoor pool? – do they want one full size indoor basketball court or two? That’s where the costs come from. When we start developing that vision of that cost, then we start the capital campaign and what that means is we seek out partnerships within the community of other local governments, we seek out partnerships with corporate businesses that may want to be donors or partners in it, could be medical facilities that want to have some sort of presence in the YMCA for physical therapy and actually have therapists there. And then you have individual, private donations.
The City of Early will keep the Needs Assessment Survey open for several weeks and they encourage all Brown County residents to fill it out. The link to the survey is at the top of this story.