Des Moines Area Community College and the YMCA of Greater Des Moines have ended plans to jointly build a new Ankeny YMCA on DMACC’s main campus, officials confirmed today.

DMACC will instead move forward with a combined student activity center and recreation center project that will add about 160,000 square feet of building space to the campus. The recreation center amenities will include two 
swimming pools along with a second gymnasium for the campus, facilities DMACC expects to make available as much-needed venues for Ankeny school and community groups.  

At the same time, the YMCA is renewing its search for a site for a new facility to serve its more than 8,300 members in one of Iowa’s fastest-growing cities. The Ankeny YMCA has been co-located with Northview Middle School, formerly Ankeny High School, for the past 25 years.

DMACC and YMCA officials had negotiated for nearly a year in an effort to assemble a joint project.

“We worked hard on it and they worked hard on it, and we got to a point to where we saw it wasn’t going to work,” said Vernon Delpesce, CEO of the YMCA of Greater Des Moines. “Partnerships can be great, but you don’t want to enter into a partnership that’s not going to work for you. Obviously it was a very large project financially, and we just couldn’t make it work.”

“We’re still committed to the Ankeny community,” Delpesce said. “We’re now beginning to explore new alternatives. This isn’t any reflection on our relationship with DMACC. We have a great relationship with DMACC and that will continue.”

In May 2014, DMACC’s board of directors had approved moving forward with exploring the joint project with the Y, which had an estimated construction cost of $23 million.

“We’ve got a great relationship with the Y and have had for years,” DMACC President Rob Denson said. “We started out thinking there could be some return to DMACC on the relationship. We just couldn’t make the numbers work as they needed to be for us.”

Denson said he presented a proposal to the Ankeny school board on March 23 seeking a $2 million contribution from the Ankeny Community School District to support construction of the competition pool in the DMACC facility. The board is expected to make a decision at its April 6 meeting.

The proposed 77,000-square-foot recreation center will adjoin an approximately 88,000-square-foot student recreation center to be built between Buildings 4 and 5 on the campus.

The recreation center will house a gymnasium, two dance/exercise studios, three racquetball courts, a weight area and a Spin area. There will be a cold-water competition pool as well as a warm-water pool with some lanes and a therapy pool for a new physical therapy assistant program.

“We’ve talked to various community groups that have lessons; there is phenomenal demand for community groups that want to come in for gym facilities,” Denson said. “I think it fills a big community need.”

Denson said a bid package for construction will be issued April 1 and that the DMACC board will vote on the project at its May 11 meeting.