The current Hayes Taylor YMCA on Market Street is 73 years old. It's worn out and has no room to grow. So a new facility is being built off Barber Park off Lee Street.
This $11.1 million dollar project will sit on about twenty acres of city owned land. President and CEO of the YMCA of Greensboro Greg Jones says the city is being very generous,
"They granted us a long term lease for a dollar a year for forty years." At the end of the lease, the Y can buy the land.
The 2-story facility will featuring an indoor aquatic center, along with wifi throughout, expanded soccer and football fields and walking trails connecting it to sports facilities at Barber Park. Jones also describes another amenity that distinguishes this new Y as progressive. "The 5-star license childcare facility looking at doing as young as 6 months to when they begin school and getting them ready for a good beginning with early childhood education prior to getting into kindergarten. We'll be open from 6 in the morning until 6 in the evening. And we're estimating we'll have room for about 80 children."
"Childcare is a big selling point." Greensboro Mayor Robert Perkins calls the new Y an economic drawing card. It'll sit across the street from the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, a partnership between North Carolina A&T State University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Mayor Perkins hopes this enhanced exercise and sports facility will lure more hi-tech companies to call Gateway University Research Park home.
"When you've got super-smart researchers working until all hours of the day and night on projects, they need to take a break. And a lot of them like to exercise. And so to have something like this across the street, grab something to eat, workout and then come back to work. It's a huge amenity."
82-year-old John Harris attended the announcement. He believes he's the product of Greensboro's vibrant Y system. The retired businessman says in 1939, his father bought him a Y membership at the current Hayes Taylor Y for a $1.50 annual fee. Harris was 9. "It gave us somewhere to go to participate in organized sports. We were exposed to the arts at the Y. They gave us a sense of value, knowing what was important in life, making certain kinds of decisions. It wasn't whether we were going to college; it was which college we were going to."
The new Hayes Taylor Y will offer many more sports programs than Harris enjoyed as a youth. But he says that's okay because he's looking forward to using the expanded senior programs. Ground breaking is expected by the end of 2013.
