Dan DeWitt, Times Columnist
In Print: Sunday, December 28, 2008
Mike Davidson with Ultra Protective Coatings checks color swatches and his plans for the new Kid Zone area of the Hernando County YMCA on Monday in Spring Hill. The YMCA is about to open a massive expansion, making it a full-service, modern community gathering place and resource.
Walk into the Hernando County YMCA and you are likely to be blown away by the new wellness center, which apparently is the preferred, modern term for what I call a gym.
Open to the public in October, the center covers 8,000 square feet, as much floor space as a McMansion, and features free weights and modern weight machines, 19 treadmills, a dozen exercise bikes, and a long line of elliptical trainers.
And no matter what variety of torture you choose in this vast space, you can distract yourself with a clear view of one of the several 52-inch, flat-screen, wall-mounted televisions.
"The word I heard when it first opened was, 'Wow!' '' said Sue Ball, district vice president of YMCA of the Suncoast, which operates branches in Pinellas, Pasco, Citrus and Hernando counties.
Yes, the wellness center — the featured attraction of the Y's nearly completed $2.2-million expansion — is nice.
So is the new teen center, which offers not only old-fashioned activities, such as guitar lessons and table tennis, but modern ones such as the Dance Dance Revolution video game.
So is the new room full of shiny bikes ready for the next spinning class and the adjacent aerobics room. So, too, will be the final stage of the expansion — a child care room with twice as much space for toys and crafts — which will be completed in time for the grand reopening of the renovated Y on Jan. 16.
The upgrade of the 20-year-old YMCA branch was approved more than two years ago, when the economy was still strong and membership in Hernando had climbed to more than 4,000. That number has since dropped about 10 percent, and the YMCA of the Suncoast board would probably not approve such a grand facility now, Ball said:
"We're pretty much in the same boat as the people who decided to build a (planned) Sports Authority and a Best Buy on U.S. 19.''
So, we're lucky to have the improved Y, and not just because, as Ball said, it now looks like a facility you would expect to find in a much larger town.
My wife, as I've mentioned before, is on the local Y board, and I worry about coming off as a booster. But I'm not writing about it because of her position. She volunteers her time because she feels the same way I do about the Y — that it serves a huge need in Hernando.
A lot of people in the county swim and exercise in their homes or at the community centers of gated subdivisions. That means they're either alone or with people like they are, people who can afford to live behind the gates and, in some cases, are above the mandated minimum age of 55.
At the YMCA, on the other hand, everyone is welcome, and scholarships are available for families that need them.
Watching the kids play basketball, watching members of various races, genders and ages work out in the wellness center, watching retirees sit for post-workout coffee, you get the unmistakable sense that you can see friendships formed, social threads that could help stitch together an otherwise fairly disconnected county.
So, to me the Y feels like one of Hernando's few real community forums. I'm happy about the resources that have been put into it, and I hope increased membership will soon justify the expansion.
But I wondered if I'm such a Y loyalist that I see what other people don't. So I called John Barbato, 55, a retired New York City police officer and a school bus driver, who has been a regular at the Y for just about as long as I have — 14 years.
During that time, in 45- minute increments, he has formed an amazingly close friendship with a fellow New Yorker 35 years his senior, Irving Botler.
"If he sees me on one elliptical trainer, he'll jump on the one next to it,'' Barbato said. "We can be on the machines 45 minutes on Monday and talk the whole time. Then the next day, the same thing. We talk about everything under the sun. ... It's gotten to the point, if I don't see him for a few days, I'll call him up and say, 'Hey, Irv, am I going to have to come over and knock the wall down?' "
It helps that they both like movies and sports, he said. It also helps that Barbato is about the same age as Botler's three sons.
"He's like an uncle to me,'' Barbato said.
"The way I look at it, at the Y, I get a workout in physically and mentally because the people I like to talk to are there.''
So if I'm a loyalist, at least I'm not the only one.
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