Dallas’ church buildings range from unadorned units in strip malls to traditional structures with stately steeples to gleaming, gargantuan arenas with dancing fountains, coffee shops and parking garages. Post-pandemic, plenty of local churches livestream Sunday services on their websites or Facebook pages, so going to church might involve avoiding the church building altogether these days.
Whatever the building looks like or what size it is, you will no doubt be reminded that the walls surrounding you are simply a place for the church to do what its members feel spiritually led to do.
For the better part of 2023, an increasingly hostile discussion has played out in downtown Dallas. It doesn't, however, involve the modern, feel-good Fellowship Church, First Baptist Dallas or the historic Cathedral Guadalupe. This showdown does involve an old building that has housed generations’ worth of tradition and good works, but instead of Bibles, choir robes and offering plates, the tools of worship used there are weight machines, squash racquets, swim trunks and basketballs.
The T. Boone Pickens YMCA on North Akard Street has been the go-to fitness facility for a diverse membership for several decades, although there’s a strong chance that will not be the case for much longer. In May, the board of directors for the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas began negotiating with a buyer for the Akard Street building, one who will not use the property to continue running the downtown Y.
When talking to those who are in favor of the sale and possible relocation of the T. Boone Pickens YMCA out of downtown, there’s a distinct “the church is the people, not the building” vibe in their messaging.
“The mission work and the programs we can do will continue, with or without a building,” said YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas President and CEO Curt Hazelbaker. “Most people don’t know that about two-thirds of the people the Y serves annually don’t come into our buildings.”
But some longtime members think Hazelbaker and the board are on a different mission and aren’t really worried about the people who do enter the downtown Y’s building.
“You know why people go to this gym?” asked Dr. Michael Schlesser, who has been a member of the downtown Y since 1980. “It’s the best gym in Dallas. It isn’t perfect, but no place is,” he said before adding, “[Hazelbaker’s] on a mission to get rid of it. He’s abandoned the mission of the YMCA.”
“You know why people go to this gym? It’s the best gym in Dallas. It isn’t perfect, but no place is.” – Dr. Michael Schlesser, Downtown YMCA member
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The YMCA came to Dallas in 1885, and the T. Boone Pickens building, which opened in 1982, is the third downtown location for the Y. With more than 200,000 square feet, it is unquestionably a unique fitness destination in the central business district. The multi-floor structure looks modern enough on the inside without sacrificing a character-lending grit that screams “Sweat! Athletics! Activity!” The lighting can be a little dim sometimes in certain areas, but the energy propelling those who take advantage of the facility is anything but.
A weekday lunch hour offers a frenzy of hustling in the aerobics classrooms and indoor basketball pickup games. Make no mistake, the Y is a large national chain, but this downtown location feels like a standalone spot, one that can’t be replicated elsewhere. Unlike the squat, oft-cramped and usually ill-equipped fitness rooms in nearby hotels and high rise condo buildings, the plentiful weight and cardio machines at the T. Boone Pickens Y stretch for what seems to be an entire city block.
You’d find it difficult to locate a single address in all of Dallas, let alone anywhere near downtown, with courts for racquetball, squash and basketball sharing the same floor plan with a lap swimming pool, a three-lane indoor walking and jogging track, a sprawling selection of weight machines, free weights and dozens of fitness class offerings.
If the day comes when the YMCA does not have a downtown gym facility in Dallas, Big D will be one of the very few major American cities without one. In Texas, San Antonio lacks such a facility, but that’s an exception.
The closest Y locations downtown members, residents and workers would have available without the Akard building are 3.5 miles away in South Dallas and five miles away in East Dallas or in Highland Park. None of these facilities has the scope of offerings available at the T. Boone Pickens location.
Ask two different religious people what heaven is and how one gets there, and you’ll likely get two different answers, even though both agree there is some sort of heavenly afterlife worth striving for. Schlesser and others, such as longtime member Paul Lindenberger, agree with Hazelbaker that the downtown Y is more than just a gym, but the similarities in belief end at that point.
“I 100% agree that T. Boone Pickens [YMCA] is not just a facility,” Lindenberger says. “It’s much more than that. It’s a community center that brings all these people together. It’s a collective with a lot of different types of people doing a lot of different things. There’s no way they [YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas] are going to be able to serve the community as they’re doing now, or especially, as they’ve done in the past, without a location downtown.”
The ability to serve the community is an intriguing point in this matter. Hazelbaker confirms that even without a downtown gym facility, community outreach efforts such as the annual sponsorship of the Dallas YMCA Turkey Trot, a water safety program, childcare, food distribution and college scholarship program will continue, wherever the T. Boone Pickens YMCA facility ends up, if it is relocated at all. It’s a compelling argument for those who are fine with exiting downtown.
Lindenberger has sat on the T. Boone Pickens YMCA branch board of management for 15 years. In May he emailed Hazelbaker to share his dismay over the metro board of directors’ unanimous vote to move forward with a sale while not committing to keeping a location downtown in the face of the branch board’s advice. Hazelbaker said that only the board of management has fiduciary responsibility for the organization, while the various branch boards serve advisory purposes.
“I understand the want to abandon a building that has significant needs, but the downtown YMCA is much more than a building that needs to be repaired, it is the heart of a community center that has been in downtown for more than 100 years,” the email reads. “I think there are many more reasons to keep it downtown than not to and that now is not the time to sell and abandon the downtown community without having a plan in place to ensure the support of the community for the next 100 years.”
The downtown Y’s building has been for sale before, in 2019, but the 2020 pandemic compelled the metro board to take the building off the market. At that point, however, Hazelbaker had committed to keeping the T. Boone Pickens YMCA somewhere downtown. By the time the board of directors unanimously voted to negotiate with a prospective buyer earlier this year, the promise to stay downtown was long gone.
Some longtime members fear the lack of commitment suggests that Hazelbaker and the board of directors have an agenda to funnel more money and resources into YMCA locations in the suburbs and more affluent areas. That concern has gained momentum since the 2022 relocation of the YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas’ corporate offices to Coppell. People like Schlesser and Lindenberger say that their Y location is worth keeping downtown, and that Hazelbaker would agree, if he’d only give it a chance.
But Hazelbaker and the board of more than 30 people voted unanimously to move forward with a sale for reportedly around $12 million because they do not see the same viability that opponents of the sale see. Hazelbaker cites $8 million in repairs that the building needs, with $6 million of that estimate for repairs to non-member-facing elements such as a new chiller for the building’s air conditioning.
That number, as daunting as it is, would be more palatable had the Y been able to regain the members it lost when the pandemic hit.
“In 2019, our board made the decision that it was important for us to keep a presence downtown,” he said. “Then the pandemic happened and downtown has come back very, very slow, maybe 60-70% are back in the office compared to 2019, and we’ve seen the same thing in terms of our membership… And so the board made the decision in February that we don’t feel that we have to continue with the presence downtown.”
If the sale goes through, the end of the T. Boone Pickens YMCA as it currently stands might very well be near. Hazelbaker recently said the process is ongoing and has not encountered any snags thus far. But the CEO and some of those who support the sale are also quick to note that they haven't abandoned the idea of the Y staying in downtown just because they aren't guaranteeing it at this point.
The YMCA of Metropolitan Dallas sent out a request for proposals to five real estate firms and received four replies, according to Hazelbaker. He and members of his staff are reviewing proposals that would relocate the facility to another spot downtown, north of Ross Avenue. Properties in Uptown are also being considered.
The Y, which has an indoor lap swimming pool, may relocate downtown, but there's no guarantee.
Nathan Hunsinger
On the flipside, members who feel the metro board is angling for a downtown exit have told us that the board’s plans are doomed to fail because they’re looking for a plot in a smaller part of downtown than they should, and if they do find a place for the right price, it’s unlikely to be the kind of location that can offer all of the things the current building does.
Even beyond the real estate specifics, there’s a sea of immiscible oil and water to navigate between the two sides. The metro board has assumed a humorless accountant’s perspective where the numbers that filter down a spreadsheet tell all the story that is required. Some members believe the opposition consists of a vocal minority of men who can’t accept cold facts. They emphasize that the millions of dollars the organization will gain from the purchase price, in addition to the millions that will not be spent on continued upkeep downtown, translates into more money for the metro Y as a whole.
On the opposite end of the debate, concerned members think primarily of the community-building that happens inside the facility and the tradition that will be lost. Nearly half of the individual membership of the downtown gym is composed of racial minorities, and more than 20% of its membership receives financial assistance. The enriching moments of interaction and bonds between people of many tax brackets, races and life stations, which likely happen more in that building than at any other YMCA in the region, will be bulldozed away.
If the T. Boone Pickens YMCA’s sale is completed soon and the building is eventually turned into a mixed-use apartment project, as has been reported, and the metro board has not settled on a new downtown location, something will be missing from downtown. Something that’s been there for so long and has witnessed multiple deaths and resurrections of the area. A place that for generations welcomed everyone from homeless vagrants to millionaire CEOs under one roof.
Try finding that inside even a downtown church these days and you’ll likely be searching for a long while. You’ll also not find that on a spreadsheet or budget plan. The members opposed to the sale and relocation need the building, in this case, to continue doing what they feel led to do.
“The facility is a connector,” Lindenberg says. “We will lose a lot. There’s nothing that compares to it in downtown or anywhere else in Dallas. If you take away the connections that are formed, it’s easy to diminish the facility. It’s the heart of the city.”
