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This is a rather surprising development with the local YMCA – based on the cost savings, it seems to be a much better move for them to build at the corner of Love and Baxter.
Local YMCA Shifts Center Plans
The Gallatin Valley YMCA said Friday it is abandoning plans to build a major community center inside Bozeman, relocating outside city limits as a result of differences with city officials over expensive street construction requirements.Instead of building on land adjacent to the county regional park in northwest Bozeman, said YMCA CEO Andrea Stevenson, the nonprofit will now partner with Journey Church to build near the church’s Commons at Baxter and Love community center, two-and-a-half miles east.The decision, said YMCA CEO Andrea Stevenson, was made in a board vote this week, following a city commission meeting last month where the city’s elected body endorsed the Y’s previous plans but insisted that a stretch of Vaquero Parkway connecting the facility to arterial streets in two directions be completed before the center was occupied.“I know the city is going to be disappointed, just like we were disappointed,” said YMCA CEO Andrea Stevenson. “But we have to do what’s best for the Y at this time — and that’s moving forward as quickly as we could.”City officials dispute the Y’s position that the street requirement made the project infeasible, saying they were in the process of working to find a mutually agreeable solution to the dilemma and that the Y’s leadership is mistaken about the willingness of a private developer to contribute to the street costs.“I wish them the best of luck,” said Deputy Mayor Carson Taylor. “I’m disappointed, because frankly we had worked very hard to work something out.”“I don’t want the city to be the scapegoat for something the city is not responsible for,” Taylor also said.The YMCA has long planned a facility adjacent to the county Regional Park in northwest Bozeman, on land it was gifted in 2008. The nonprofit and city had also discussed partnering to build an aquatics facility on the site — a project on hold as the city pursued a new law and justice facility but tentatively scheduled for 2019 in a plan approved by the city commission last week.