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Letter From The Executive Director“READY, SET, GROW! March 6, 2008 Dear Downtown Berkeley YMCA Members, Your Downtown YMCA is planning a major seismic upgrade beginning this spring to ensure that the 17,000 people who use the Y will be even safer in the event of a major earthquake. All your programs will continue during the seismic retrofit because the Y will be creating new “swing space” for programs that will need to be moved during construction, which is expected to take nine to ten months. When the earthquake safety work is completed, this extra space will allow the YMCA to expand and add programs that many of you have been asking for. The end result will be a safer, bigger, and better YMCA for our community. READY: Your YMCA will be better prepared for a major earthquake. The 1960 Building is the most heavily used part of the YMCA—with nearly 8,000 visitors a week. The seismic work will affect the strength training and stretching rooms on the first floor, the aerobics and cycling programs on the second floor, and part of the YMCA Hotel and Residence on the third and fourth floors. The seismic retrofit will reinforce the connections between the floors and the walls in the 1960 Building. The structural strength of the 1910 Building will be increased with the addition of a new floor over the existing cardio room and racquetball court, which have very high ceilings. The new floor will reinforce the perimeter walls to prevent them from collapsing in a major earthquake. SET: Your favorite YMCA programs will continue during construction. The programs in the 1960 Building—aerobics, cycling, and strength training—will move temporarily to new swing space while the seismic retrofit is underway. The existing cardio machines will move into the Family Gym temporarily while we construct a new cardio area. GROW: Your YMCA will expand as a result of the seismic retrofit.
Racquetball at the YMCA For example, we investigated building the new swing space floor only over the cardio room in order to leave the racquetball court intact. That was not feasible because it would have required building a costly new shear wall, a foundation, and footings through the men’s locker room below with an estimated cost of over $1 million. We also looked at whether a new racquetball court could be built within either the Main or Family Gyms. But we soon realized that doing so would eliminate use of the gym space for full-court basketball and volleyball. Nearly 600 people use the Family Gym every week, and over 700 use the Main Gym. Similarly, locating the racquetball court in the Mind/Body Center would eliminate our Yoga, Pilates, Chi Gung, Feldenkrais, Meditation, Prenatal Yoga, and Tai Chi programs, which are used by over 1,400 people per week. We also considered building a new racquetball court on the roof, but our engineers told us that the roof isn’t strong enough to carry such a heavy structure without spending over $2 million to reinforce it. In the end, the loss of the racquetball court, used by a small number of players daily, serves the larger YMCA community of nearly 17,000 people. Removing the racquetball court provides substantial new program spaces for people of all ages and abilities while we make the Y safer for everyone. The YMCA will help current racquetball players find alternative places to play. We will be providing you much more detail on all the proposed changes in the coming months, and are planning a comprehensive communications effort during construction to keep you informed. In the meantime, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at pchong@baymca.org or (510) 665-3230. Sincerely,
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