YMCA Sudbury location called the organization's 'Achilles heel'

During Tuesday's city council meeting in Sudbury, YMCA Northeastern Ontario CEO Helen Francis said the Sudbury site is so expensive to operate, it's become the Y’s Achilles heel.

“The biggest challenge for us is it is an expensive facility," Francis said.

"It has a high utility cost, as you might imagine, and the Y particularly we still owe a certain amount on our mortgage so we have to pay significant amounts of principal and interest."

She said they are on track to lose $700,000 a year, "which is obviously not sustainable.”

The building is home to not only the YMCA, but also the Parkside Centre, Health Sciences North Outpatient Cardiac Rehab and 49 licensed childcare spaces.

“Twenty years ago, this Centre for Life came to fruition based on really two key objectives," Francis said.

"One to rejuvenate the downtown core, and two to make sure that we had accessible holistic wellness programs for the Sudbury community as a whole. Those two objectives probably are at least as true as they were 20 years ago, if not even more so, as we all try to recover and renew from what the pandemic has left for us."

Despite a recent fundraising campaign doing well, bringing in close to $2 million, Francis said those funds are not capital dollars. In the last two years, the Y has seen a $10 million decrease in membership revenue.

Since reopening, memberships are only back at 65 per cent of pre-pandemic levels.

“We’re just really trying to be proactive and we’re really optimistic that by working with partners collaborating we can have a collective impact in our community,” she said.

Francis said the presentation to council was to provide an update, and to start a bigger conversation about how the city and the Y can make the Durham Street location more sustainable.