(Atlantic) The Nishna Valley Family YMCA staff and Board of Directors hosted a community meeting on Tuesday evening at the Cass County Community Center to discuss the future of recreation and quality of life issues in Atlantic and the surrounding area.
The YMCA is seeking community input on what types of recreational projects they want to see added to the community, how to pay for the project, where it would be located, and how can they turn Atlantic into a regional hub where people want to come for their family fun.
“We call our service area the Nishna Valley because it’s certainly not just Atlantic and not just Cass County because we draw people from 27-plus different zip codes,” said Dan Haynes, Executive Director of the Nishna Valley Family YMCA. “So what do our people want and what will attract newcomers to our area, and how do we make ourselves a regional hub.”
The current YMCA facility is 18-years years old, and they’re working to pay it off in the next two years, so what’s next? “We’re fairly landlocked, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do a two-story type of thing,” said Haynes. “We’ve talked about expanding into the back parking lot with an outdoor pool, whether we put in a lazy river or splash pad and three lanes back there because we don’t need another six lanes of water. We have that inside. And how would we open our indoor pool up to the outside with a DynaDome retractable closing system that opens and closes in ten minutes? That would be the best of both worlds, instead of spending several million dollars on an outdoor pool we use three months out of the year.”
Some other ideas presented by the YMCA at the meeting include; Senior Activity Center, the Teen hang-out area, and community activity rooms. Other items on the list include trail development for biking and walking, a children’s museum, children’s soft play space, coffee smoothie internet social area, indoor cycling studio, expanded indoor pickleball space, and an indoor putt-putt and or golf simulator.
“The goal is to find out what is next for our community in the realm of recreation and quality of life,” said Dan Haynes. “How do we entice more people to come here and live, how do we take care of the people already here, and what do they want out of it. We want a place where people can visit and take part in some recreation, go downtown and eat and shop-it’s all one economic driver, and we want to see what is next for recreation.”
The YMCA outlined all of the projects on a sheet of paper as well as additional projects presented by community members attending the meeting. The attendees received six dots to vote on what projects are near and dear to their hearts. The Board of Directors will take that information and sit down with the City and Park and Rec. Board and hash that out and see what levels to the top. Haynes says they may follow this up with an online survey to give everyone a chance to weigh in on the list of proposed projects.
The next step will be deciding how to pay for it. Haynes says the financial options include; private donations, grants, and local option sales tax money. “Hopefully we can come up with a financial option that we can afford and better the community,” said Haynes.
