The Gary YMCA at Tolleston Opportunity Campus and its partners will create new opportunities for the future of Gary residents, speakers told VIP attendees at Wednesday’s dedication ceremony.
The YMCA is scheduled to open Sept. 28. Memberships were to go on sale beginning Thursday, with special perks to the first few hundred members.
“Today we’re opening more than a new building. We’re opening a new chapter for Gary,” Mayor Eddie Melton said.
“We celebrate everything that will happen here in the years and years to come,” Crossroads YMCA President and CEO Jay Buckmaster said.
“This project represents a belief in Gary and, most importantly, a belief in the people who call Gary home,” he said. “Our responsibility now is to make sure this YMCA is filled every day with caring staff, meaningful programs, children learning and playing, families spending time together and people becoming healthier.
The new Gary YMCA is in a large building shared with the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana and Methodist Hospitals.
“The largest YMCA we ever started was 45,000 square feet. This was almost double that,” Cynthia Polk, advisory board chair for Gary YMCA, said.
The original cost was expected to be $30 million. “It ended up being about a $50 million investment into Gary. We went all in with the size, the features, the graphics,” she said.
Almost 13 years ago, Melton recalled, volunteers began cleaning out the shuttered Tolleston Middle School for the new Boys & Girls Club. At the time, he never imagined a state-of-the-art facility on the same campus.
“It will be a place where young will learn that they can compete and grow and dream,” he said, and “a place where seniors can stay active and involved.”
“This is emotional,” Dean and Barbara White Family Foundation Executive Director Bill Hanna said.
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“I’ve gone beyond believing and into realizing there is divine intervention into this place,” he said.
“This will be the house that proves to the world that Northwest Indiana knows how to get things done,” Hanna said.
It’s also the last project that the late Bruce White had a heavy hand in. “He was absolutely passionate about this getting done,” Hanna said.
“This is not about us. This is generational change,” he said.
“Can you imagine what this will look like in 15 to 20 years, the lives that will be changed in this place?”
Suzanne McCormick, president and CEO of YMCA of the USA, said she wants to come back to Gary in about 10 years to hear about the lives changed by the new facility.
Nationally, there are about 2,600 YMCA locations. The organization is celebrating its 175th anniversary this year.
“I want to be able to tell your story to other communities,” she said.
YMCAs are helping fight loneliness and isolation, one of the greatest epidemics the nation faces now, McCormick said. Even as the nation becomes more polarized politically, YMCAs are helping to bring people together.
Gary YMCA Executive Director LeShawn Brooks said the new YMCA will create opportunities that strengthen individuals and families.
“Tolleston is more than a place where we work. It’s a community to which many of us are personally connected,” she said.
That’s especially true for Kelly Powers Baria, Methodist Hospitals Board of Directors member and executive vice president of Powers & Sons Construction.
Powers & Sons and Berglund Construction are joint venture partners for the project.
“For me and my family, this neighborhood is home,” she said. Powers was born at Methodist and brought home just a few blocks away. She took Saturday classes at Tolleston Middle School, although she didn’t appreciate it at the time.
She and her brother used to ride their bikes down the stairs at Tolleston Park, and adults let her parents know about it. “We grew up in a community that looked out for each other.”
Powers recalled she and her brother sneaked a couple of quarters from the change her dad left on his dresser at night so they could buy ice cream at Dairy Queen. “The statute of limitations is up now,” she said.
Her mother was valedictorian at Tolleson High School in 1965.
In 1967, her grandfather founded Powers & Sons “right across the street. We can see this building from our front door.” Her grandfather built nearby homes.
“I’m proud to be the third generation of the Powers family to serve on the board of directors” at Methodist Hospitals, she said. Now the hospital is improving health in the community by going beyond the hospital walls to meet people where they are, including at the Tolleston Opportunity Campus.
“This campus brings together health and wellness, education, youth development, child care” and more, Powers said.
She also plans to join the YMCA and walk the one-eighth-mile track above the gym where she spoke.
Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Northwest Indiana President and CEO Mike Jessen said the club will double the number of kids served in the past, to as many as 500 in the building. “The kids of greater Gary need it, and the kids of a greater Gary deserve it,” he said.
“We’re celebrating the opening of something that will have an impact for generations to come,” Jessen said.
“What an incredible moment this is, and what an incredible testament to what we can accomplish when we come together,” he said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
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