By Joyce Miles<br><a href="mailto:joyce.miles@lockportjournal.com">E-mail Joyce</a>
William Ben May’s recent letter in the US&J; Mailbag was rather provocative.
It’s not often that an influential supporter of not-for-profit works criticizes one.
In the June 19 edition, May, the executive director of the Grigg-Lewis Foundation, publicly called out Lockport Family YMCA for the course of its facilities expansion capital campaign.
In an open letter to the Y, May opined that its more-than-four-year-old campaign to raise $9.5 million from charitable foundations and the public, in order to build a branch facility in the town of Lockport, “has been surrounded by secrecy and mystery from the beginning” — and its gist is wrongheaded.
Citing a number of developments occurring downtown over the past few years, some literally in the YMCA’s backyard, May suggested the public interest would be better served if YMCA abandoned its plan to build a branch in the town and invested in facilities expansion downtown instead.
“The existence of a skating rink, the bank, the Lockport Library, the YMCA and former Post Office form a quadrangle which can be, and I believe will be, the catalyst for the redevelopment of central city. Considering the amount of money that will be necessary to erect your new facility, I cannot believe that a part of that invested in total renovation of your existing building would not serve the purpose of a modern YMCA,” May wrote. “I urge the board ... to re-examine their position.”
The letter is stunning because of who May is.
Grigg-Lewis Foundation in 2005 committed $500,000 to the Y’s branch-building campaign. May represented the foundation at a September 2005 campaign kickoff event at Lockport Town & Country Club, at which he proclaimed, “We are pleased to be part of this new, exciting journey for the YMCA and the Lockport community.”
It’s extremely rare for a member of a charitable or civic board to publicly knock a beneficiary. May emphasized, in a side note in his letter, that he was representing himself, not the Grigg-Lewis Foundation. Even so, his name is inextricably linked with the foundation and the official recipients of his missive — YMCA directors and trustees — seem to have been caught off guard by it.
Timothy Smith, president of the YMCA board of directors, did not return the US&J;’s request for a response to the letter Tuesday.
Tom Weeks, president of the YMCA board of trustees — and also a Grigg-Lewis Foundation board member— said nobody from the Y would respond to May’s comments publicly until they’d spoken with him privately. That still hadn’t happened as of Wednesday.
Branch critic: Let’s ‘turn up the heat’
Meanwhile, Mayor Michael Tucker, whose repeated public pleas to the Y boards to invest in downtown expansion have been rejected, took May’s letter as inspiration to try again.
He supplied the US&J;, and May, with copies of a hypothetical site plan showing a new Y facility on Chestnut Street, between Washburn Street and the Lockport Ice Arena & Sports Center.
Tucker had the plan drafted last fall by Apex Consulting, using the dimensions of the Snyder Drive, Town of Lockport, site, and drawing on the nearby, remediated Dussault Foundry parcel for green space.
The plan projects a new, 74,500-square-foot Y building practically kitty-corner from the existing East Avenue facility; and it supposes some or all of the outdoor facilities the Y wants on Snyder Drive, including a track, basketball court and volleyball court, can be accommodated around the building or on the Niagara County-held Dussault parcel.
Tucker said he commissioned the concept after being told by Y officials that the idea wouldn’t work, in part for a lack of desired green space.
“The city paid for this drawing because it’s important to the city,” Tucker said. “(Y officials) had said all along their project could not fit downtown, or fit into that space, so I wanted to find out once and for all. Guess what: It fits.”
The drawing is dated October 2008, yet Tucker never made public mention of it until this week. He said he gave a copy to Kevin Van Dusen, vice president of the Y board of directors, late last year and asked Van Dusen to share it with the board. He never got a response, positive or negative, from any board member, so he let it go.
Van Dusen this week confirmed he did accept a copy of the concept plan from Tucker but never brought it to the Y board for discussion. He elected not to, he said, because “the consensus was we were far enough along with the project that it would be counterproductive” to consider alternatives.
Tucker said May’s letter made him think it was time to blow the dust off that concept plan and “turn up the heat” on the Y. Were Lockport Ice and the YMCA next-door neighbors, they’d create a veritable recreation magnet downtown and complete revival of the Chestnut Street corridor. The image is too powerful to let go, he said.
The obvious physical hurdles — two existing, occupied buildings east of Lockport Ice that would have to be acquired and demolished, and the fact an active rail line separates the Y concept building and the Dussault parcel — can be got around, he added.
“We’re ready to do whatever we need to do to make this happen, if minds are changed at the Y,” Tucker said. “I’d stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them in a fund drive to make it a success.”
Y director: There’s no turning back
Mark Albiez, executive director of Lockport Family YMCA, has not seen the concept plan — and suggested, quite forcefully, that he doesn’t care to. His reaction to it is the same he had when Tucker previously asked the board to consider the Jubilee building, Harrison Place or expansion in place.
“Our board’s decision is to build in the town. We’re not backing out,” Albiez said. “We’re being funded to do what we planned to do. ... Our direction is a good direction; we’re not going to change our mind now.”
The cost of building a “south branch” of Lockport YMCA in the town is estimated at $11.5 million. The Y board of trustees allocated $2 million for the project and a fundraising committee is charged with raising the rest.
The four-year-old fundraising campaign is in a holding pattern, according to Albiez. At this point, he said, the committee has $6.3 million in “confirmed” pledges from foundations/larger private donors. It always has planned a “public” phase of fundraising, in which it would appeal to the community at large, but not until it has raised 70 percent of goal, or $8.5 million, from charities, corporations, organizations and big individual donors.
As of now, Albiez said, fundraising is “pretty much at the same level” as in mid-2008, when a $250,000 pledge by First Niagara Bank was announced; no additional large pledges have been publicized since then. He attributed the standstill to economic downturn and resulting corporate cautiousness about giving.
Critics of the south branch plan claim it’s more concerned with attracting Amherst-Clarence money than serving the Lockport community. Some, including Tucker, still insist opening of a facility in the town inevitably would cause abandonment of the inner-city original, despite Y officials’ repeated vows to maintain both.
May says he’s simply been thinking more lately about the economic impact of Y expansion and how well the funding decisions he’s helped the Grigg-Lewis Foundation make are serving the Lockport community. He wrote his letter to the Y after thinking about it and Lockport Ice, which also is a foundation-supported endeavor.
May didn’t know about the Apex concept plan at the time, he said; but when the foundation granted Lockport Ice a bridge loan to buy the Jubilee building, a vision of a downtown recreation magnet — ice rink on Chestnut Street and YMCA just across the way — came to him.
“I thought about all the money the Grigg Lewis Foundation had put into the skating complex, nearly a half-million dollars, and I thought about the Y, and I thought, this is ridiculous: The Y is going to leave a recreational complex that it could be joining for the benefit of both (endeavors),” he said.
Outside the Y ranks at least, May said public response to his letter has been “very favorable.”
“I’ve had quite a few people tell me, ‘thank goodness someone said it,’ ” he said. “I would love to think it started something. We’ll see.”
Contact reporter Joyce Miles at 439-9222, ext. 6245.
