Georgina passes on YMCA partnership for MURC

Council decides to go it alone on $42-million recreation facility

Yorkregion.com
May 24, 2019
Heidi Riedner

Any thoughts of the town partnering with the YMCA on the $42-million multi-use recreation complex (MURC) were put to rest after council voted unanimously to go it alone on the facility.

A number of partnership models were debated on the heels of a presentation by YMCA-GTA president and CEO Medhat Mahdy on May 8 at council.

Mahdy provided an overview of the mandate and scope of the YMCA, which has been around for 167 years in the GTA with 440 locations offering 330 child-care sites, health and fitness facilities, summer camps, newcomer supports and employment services.

Mahdy said the YMCA saw revenue growth the past 10 years, which was $275 million last year, under a membership operating model that subsidizes about 25 per cent of memberships.

But the numbers didn’t add up for council when it came to partnering with the YMCA on the MURC.

The town wasn’t prepared to hand over ownership of the land and facility to the YMCA under one proposed option that would see the town pay for two-thirds of construction costs and the YMCA pay for operating costs except for programming that did not fall under its membership model, such as a library, and seniors and youth areas.

Council was even less thrilled with the prospect of being on the hook for any operating deficit under a second proposal that would see the YMCA operating a town-owned facility where all capital investment would be the town's responsibility.

Under that scenario, the town would have first right of refusal to “buy back” the facility if the YMCA pulled out.

Any agreement would have been contingent on YMCA membership numbers, projected to be in the neighbourhood of 7,500 to 9,000 to make the facility sustainable.

“I don’t think that number is going to be found,” Dan Buttineau, Georgina's director of recreation and culture, said, adding the YMCA would be looking for some form of subsidy from the municipality to offset initial losses until they gain momentum, which would most likely take five to six years.

While the YMCA would require $3.5 million in annual revenue to make the facility viable and sustainable, according to the report, Buttineau said if the town were to go it alone, gross operating costs for the facility based on current assumptions would be $1.6 million.

The hope is to generate between $600,000 and $700,000 in revenue to offset those costs, leaving a running deficit of $1 million, he said.

“For us to have a break-even facility, the charges we would have to put back on to the user groups would virtually render it inaccessible,” he said.

While the town would seek corporate sponsors, alternative revenues and bundling opportunities to reduce that amount, Buttineau said municipal recreation facilities generally operate at a loss.

The first public engagement session for the MURC is May 27 at Our Lady of the Lake Catholic College School in Keswick from 6:30 to 8 p.m.