Two years ago, we sighed a breath of relief when the sale of the downtown T. Boone Pickens YMCA fell through.
But what is happening now with the roughly 211,000 square-foot property downtown?
Members who left the branch when the property was pending sale are slowly trickling back in. At the start of the summer, the branch waived registration fees for new members. On Tuesday evenings, the corporate pickleball league is in full swing. Most recently, the Y put about a million dollars into interior renovations including new signage and lighting, president and CEO of the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas Curt Hazelbaker said.
But what about the long-term future of the downtown Y that has long been a cornerstone of our community?
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The good news is the YMCA plans to partner with Dallas County to establish a child care center. The roughly 25,000 square-foot center could accommodate about 300 children, ages 6 months to 6 years old, Hazelbaker said.
This is an exciting development. A new child care center would be a welcome addition to the revitalization of downtown and provide much-needed services to downtown workers and families.
Dallas County Commissioner Andy Sommerman and his chief of staff, Tom Ervin, recently worked on a pilot program for Dallas County employees to receive a stipend to help cover the cost of child care. While they were working on the project, they realized there weren’t many child care facilities downtown.
“It’s a child care desert,” Ervin said. “And so we started looking around for potential places to either expand or develop child care services in the downtown area, and that led us to conversations with the downtown YMCA.”
According to Downtown Dallas Inc., there are currently five child care options available downtown. With 15,000 downtown residents and this number growing, we need more options for child care not only for city workers but also for those in restaurants and hotels downtown.
Hazelbaker said the child care facility would cost about $3.5 million to complete. So far, they have secured $2 million for the project. The YMCA and the county have each contributed $1 million but are still looking for other partners to contribute the remaining funds.
We hope to see a local philanthropic partner or partners step up to contribute the additional funds for the facility to come to life. Supporting accessible child care downtown is a smart investment in Dallas’ workforce and the city center.
We don’t want to see this project stall or the space sit unused for years. We want to see this child care center get off the ground and come to life — for workers, for families and for the future of downtown Dallas.