The Volusia Flagler YMCA is prepared to build a $16 million, 44,000-square-foot YMCA in Palm Coast’s Town Center with a 50-meter Olympic-size swimming pool. But the organization is asking Palm Coast government for $3 million, and to take over management of the city’s Aquatic Center, known as Freida Zamba pool.
The Y is also asking the Flagler County School Board for $3 million, which the board will see as a very heavy lift, and will be approaching the county with a similar request.
“What would be ideal is if we could get them to split this $6 million with us and the school board,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said of the county, as if already negotiating the figure. “So if it were 2, 2, 2, that would be obviously a lot better for our budget and for the school board’s budget. The county obviously enjoys a lot of our parks and recreational amenities now. So I just really encourage that conversation to take place.”
The Y’s Palm Coast project does not appear to be contingent on the government’s cash contributions, but its immediacy will be.
The YMCA has $2 million in the bank for the project, Chris Seilkop, CEO of the Volusia Flagler YMCA (and a DeLand native), told the council this morning. It is also launching a local fundraising committee. The goal is $3 million over 18 months.
“Our corporate board is committed to this project, so we’re looking at a total cost of about $16 million,” Seilkop said, projecting construction “maybe in two years, maybe sooner.” (That was also the hope two years ago, when the Y and the city were banking on state appropriations. Plans were set. The governor vetoed most of those, dashing hopes but not the Y’s momentum.)
The Y will be built on city-owned land donated to the city by Allette Properties as part of the Town Center Development of Regional Impact two decades ago. (Allette Properties is represented by Jeff Douglas, CEO of Douglas Properties and a member of the YMCA board. Douglas was in the room this morning. Mayor Mike Norris was not. Norris has singled out Douglas as a rapacious developer whom he wanted banned from City Hall, unaware that City Hall, too, sits on land donated by Allette.)
“This is by far the most energetic community I have seen in wanting a YMCA,” Seilkop told the council this morning. “The zeal is very refreshing, to be honest with you. And so our feeling is, as soon as we build this, it’s going to be too small in two years. We’re going to hit 6000 members, which is about the size of the Ormond Y, because we’ve done the market study and we’ve seen it.”
That was before he made the monetary ask. But the council was very receptive.
Seilkop presented the YMCA plan to the council along with his pair of requests. The money request was presented as more of a short-term loan that the city would soon recoup, if it agrees to give up management of the aquatic center, which has been a money-loser for the city.
“We think we can do it more efficiently and provide the same services, if not more, because we could sell memberships that would incorporate the Ormond Y for people who use the Freida Zamba pool,” Seilkop said. “That’s how we cover our cost, is selling memberships to all of our YMCAs. It offsets the $500,000 to a million dollars you’re going to lose a year operating an Olympic-sized pool.”
The city would recoup the $3 million after six years, since it would no longer be subsidizing Frieda Zamba. Seilkop said the school district is interested in a partnership with the Y that would generate additional dollars since the district would pay for use of the Y to benefit its sports teams. But the School Board would have to approve the request.
“This is a great alternative in terms of offloading some of that cost but still having the amenities available in a new, modern facility, rather than an aging one that we struggle to maintain,” Council member Ty Miller said. (In the last year alone the city lost close to $400,000 operating its pool.)
“I truly think this is a win-win,” Council member Charles Gambaro said, “So take care of current ops and future ops at the same time.” “Ops” is military jargon for “operations.”
The council gave Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston direction to continue talks with Seilkop on the Y taking over the city pool.
“If we can pull this off it’d be great, but it always comes down to money,” Council member Dave Sullivan said. “The current pools that we have, the two pools, are not sustainable into the future.” He was referring to Freida Zamba and the school district’s Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club.
Seilkop had done his homework. He flawlessly described the local sports and aquatic facilities needs are, based on his conversations with members of the community. With him were several of his board members, including Douglas and John Walsh, former publisher of the Palm Coast Observer.
Walsh gave a brief history of the YMCA’s presence in Flagler County, the first one located at the ITT Welcome Center, another at what was then known as Florida Hospital Flagler, where the Y “was operating at a loss,” Walsh said. In 2019, Douglas and Walsh invited Seilkop for talks about opening a facility in Palm Coast. Seilkop passed.
His reluctance changed as the Volusia Flagler operation turned from losing money to “a pretty healthy financial statement.” That made opening a facility in Palm Coast more attractive. He built three YMCAs in his career and renovated 10 of them.
He now runs the six in Volusia on a $12.9 million budget, each with its own financial arrangement with the local community. In DeLand, for example, the city owns the land, the Y owns the facility. In Holly Hill, Port Orange and Edgewater, the cities own the facilities, the Y runs the programs. “ So we have a lot of different business models that we have integrated to make work to better the community,” Seilkop said, including innumerable partnerships with other civic organizations.
And no one is “ever” turned away for inability to pay, he said. Scholarships fill all needed gaps.
“I’m not here to take programming over. I’m here to fill in the gaps,” Seilkop said–not just in sports: it has a cancer recovery program, it has a reading program partnership with the University of Florida, it has performing arts programs, Christmas shopping events for children, Healthy Kids Day, and so on. Then there are all the sports opportunities, not least aquatics.
“You guys need a gym in the worst way,” Seilkop said. That and aquatics. The Y has seven pools in its local organization, seven of them Olympic-size, all of them self-sustaining. Numerous programs, from scuba classes to water aerobics to synchronized swimming to swim meets keep the pools in the black. (Diving? Sorry, no, not here. It’s not “practical,” Seilkop said, with insurance pressures and low use.)
He described the 44,000 square foot building planned for Town Center, with a wellness center, a rectangular sports gym, a zero-entry pool, a spin room, and so on. It will also have a 50-meter Olympic swimming pool with 18 to 21 lanes and a depth of 8.5 feet at the far end.
“I’ve tried to design the pool around the needs that I’ve heard from the community,” Seilkop said–“the lap swimmers, the water aerobics, the synchronized swimming, your high school teams, which it would be able to house both of them, your swim meets, your swim lessons, and then also your families.”
Then came the two asks.
Walsh, a salesman by instinct, told the council that if it were building its own aquatic center–a long-term ambition in city planning, always scuttled by cost–it would have to put up far more than $3 million. Intentionally or not, he also made it seem as if the local government’s contributions were not deal-breakers, essentially opening the negotiating window wider.
“With approval from the city, approval from the school board, our conversation changes from coming soon to coming, right?” Walsh said, referring to the $3 million the Y was requesting from each government. “We don’t have to raise all of the money now. We have the financial ability to mortgage. Chris doesn’t want to hear it. It puts more pressure on him as the operator. But the board is fully behind this project here in Palm Coast.”
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