By Tracy Record
West Seattle Blog editor
Starting with an all-staff meeting tonight, the West Seattle YMCA is pulling the wraps off plans for a major expansion project at its headquarters in The Triangle.
The Y (a WSB sponsor) will be officially filing for permits with the city this week, but has been quietly fundraising for a while. Its Board of Managers has a goal of raising half the cost of the $11 million project, with the Greater Seattle Y board raising money for the other half.
“We’re excited!” exclaimed regional executive Josh Sutton, during our conversation about the plan.
(Rendering of the future northwestern corner)
The West Seattle board already is almost halfway to its goal, before expanding the capital campaign more widely across the community – $2.6 million so far.
It’s been long known the Y would have to expand, with 4,200 member households right now and West Seattle’s population continuing to grow. It has had a Building Committee for seven years, Sutton explained. They mulled options such as moving, or buying another building, and then, about two years ago, started to “coalesce around a specific idea” involving expanding right on their current site between 36th and 37th, Snoqualmie and Oregon.
The Y has hired Miller Hayashi Architects, whose most recent West Seattle projects include the expansion at just-reopened Fairmount Park Elementary and the 4-year-old rebuild of Fire Station 37, and contractor Lease Crutcher Lewis (which built the facility in 1984).
After about five months of work on pricing and plans, “we’ve pretty much finished the schematic phase, but there’s a lot to be decided, still,” Sutton said.
Here are the basics:
*The expansion will be accomplished WITHOUT any closure of the facility: “We’ll stay open throughout, though there may be interruptions of some services”
*It’ll add 50 percent more space – 32,000 square feet now, 47,000 square feet when finished
*The expanded building will face SW Snoqualmie (shown in the rendering atop this story), designated as a “festival street” in the West Seattle Triangle Plan process, and therefore a possible venue for occasional events; the project itself was planned to be in alignment with the overall Triangle plan
*A “healthy cooking” kitchen will be a major new feature, “programmed with nutrition classes” that they haven’t had a space to handle before (and if fees are involved, there will be subsidizing for those eligible) as well as demonstrations
*Family changing rooms will be added, linked to the pool deck
*The pool itself isn’t targeted for major work, but “some daylighting” is on the drawing board, according to Sutton, to remedy the not-so-brightly-lit boxiness of the building’s original 1984 design
*The fitness space will more than double, and will enable the repurposing of some other spaces
*A space will be designated specifically for “tweens,” youth who wind up at loose ends between the services and spaces available for children and for teenagers.
*A 1,000-square-foot community-meeting room will be added (fronting SW Snoqualmie): “The Triangle keeps growing, and people need places to meet; the Y has historically been a place for people to convene.”
*Its small child-care building will be torn down and the front parking lot will be torn down; end result will still be more parking, because of new underground spaces
*A small addition on the northwest corner will replace the racquetball courts,
Also part of the project, some work outside the building, such as finishing the sidewalk on Oregon (a street that will become a more-important connector because of the hillclimb planned on the site of the 4435 35th SW development that’s now under construction). Sutton expects that will be followed by angled parking and city-imposed time limits on what is now a street without them. The street-parking situation after the project is done will be “pretty much a net wash,” he says, some added, some removed, but the Y itself will have 19 more motorized-vehicle spaces (as well as some new underground bicycle parking). That’s a third more parking than they have now, and they expect the facility will be 20 percent busier.
In case you were wondering: No, there won’t be a rate increase to fund any of this; Sutton points out that rates rise every year as part of the Greater Seattle Y’s plan, since membership gets you in to other facilities around the system too. No, this doesn’t involve the Fauntleroy Y – “we’re not trying to consolidate,” Sutton says; the Y has had a presence there since the early ’20s and expects to “continue to do that.” (They’ve made investments in recent years to keep the Fauntleroy facility “up to date and fresh,” in fact, and it continues to be operated with the Triangle facility as one entity.)
Though the Y is a nationally known name, this project is very local – including major donors such as Nucor, which will even be donating some steel that will go into the project.
In all, “This is what the next generation of West Seattle needs,” Sutton said. “Taking the building and updating it – it’s still in good shape, would make no sense to tear it down.” (By the way, this isn’t the Y’s original building; its first one in 1921 was a small building near where Trader Joe’s is now; after a fire there, the Y moved to an old dairy building across the street, where the Franciscan clinic is now.) The work will leave room for future expansion – the ceiling will be high enough that the building could add a second story sometime; for now, it’ll be an “open, light space.”
The Y hopes to break ground next summer, with the project lasting about a year. In the meantime:
WHAT’S NEXT
*The Y expects to file its permit applications on Wednesday
*While the city does accept public comments on projects, this one, Sutton said, will not require Design Review
*Find out more about the project at OurNewY.org, which just went live tonight
*Attend a community meeting at the Y’s “Studio 5” space (4518 Fauntleroy Way SW):
–2-3 pm Sunday, September 14th
–6-7 pm Tuesday, September 16th
–7-8 am Wednesday, September 17th
*If you haven’t received an invitation to donate, and are interested in supporting the project, contact Sutton via the West Seattle Y.
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