Northwest YMCA sites offer several recreational options

Two of three centers are located in area

Photos by Jim Miller/ViewAbove, Jaylen Fox goes up for a shot in a YMCA Basketball League game at the Durango Hills Community Center, 3521 N. Durango Drive, March 29. Right, northwest Las Vegas resident Jim Henderson works out in the weight room. Jim MIller/ViewThe Durango Hills Community Center is one of only three YMCA sites in the Las Vegas Valley. Photos by Jim Miller/ViewAbove, Jaylen Fox goes up for a shot in a YMCA Basketball League game at the Durango Hills Community Center, 3521 N. Durango Drive, March 29. Right, northwest Las Vegas resident Jim Henderson works out in the weight room. Advertisement

Recreation options abound in Northwest Las Vegas, an area that only a few years ago was considered undeveloped and sorely lacking parks, sports fields and community centers to provide family activities.

YMCA of Southern Nevada has been instrumental in providing Centennial Hills and its surrounding neighborhoods with those services, thanks to its original location on Meadows Lane, its Durango Hills outpost and the newest site, the Centennial Hills Community Center. Water parks, indoor and outdoor pools, fitness centers, gymnasiums, tennis courts and aerobics classes are among the vast array of amenities to be found at these recreation hotbeds.

And yet these three facilities are the only YMCA sites in the valley, which is hovering around the 2 million population mark. It begs the question: how did the northwest get so lucky?

The answer is the unique public-private partnership with the city of Las Vegas, which allows recreational programming at the Durango Hills Community Center, 3521 N. Durango Drive, and the Centennial Hills Community Center, 6601 N. Buffalo Drive, to be run by the YMCA.

"Once we started work renovating the Heinrich location, which opened there in 1980, we looked at ways to expand and establish a presence in a growth area like the northwest," said YMCA of Southern Nevada Executive Director Mike Lubbe. "When the city started looking for a nonprofit group to possibly run the Durango Hills building, we were lucky enough to be chosen to operate out of that new building, and things went so well at Durango that we decided to do it again at Centennial Hills, which is a lot larger and has more of a modern architecture to it. (The partnership) has made economic sense for us and for the city, as well."

Las Vegas City Councilman Larry Brown represents Ward 4, an area that includes parts of Centennial Hills and Summerlin. He played a big role in setting up the "pilot program" that is the Durango Hills Community Center, which opened in 2000.

At the time, the city was working on two community centers in the area, Durango Hills and the Veterans Memorial Leisure Services Center at Palo Verde High School. Plans for both buildings were identical, and one was chosen for something new and different.

"It was my first experience (as an elected official) staffing a recreation center, and the staffing requests were extremely high," Brown said. "So, we raised the question of why do we need so many people. We really wanted to take a look at it, and we came back with the result that the city was overstaffing. So, we took a look at what other cities do to staff centers like these, and the opportunity to partner with a nonprofit came up."

Brown said the YMCA came up with the most comprehensive plan for appropriate programming at Durango Hills, and the national organization's reputation of more than 150 years of community service went a long way, as well.

And then there's the money.

"After the first year, an audit showed a savings of $600,000 to $700,000 for the city's budget, so we knew it was the right thing to do as far as cost and savings," Brown said. "And partly due to the success at Durango, we have the Centennial Hills location, which moves in the same direction but is twice the size.

"And I think we have really gleaned a lot of information from this partnership about how to make our other community centers operate more efficiently. This is a simple example of what government should be doing every budget cycle, evaluating our programs and services to see if we should be doing this or if there is a more effective way."

For the typical resident, the partnership translates into proven recreational programming at convenient locations.

Chuck Searle is the senior executive director of the YMCA at the Durango Hills center, known for its green park surroundings, a beach entry pool and an adjacent golf club, which opened in 2002.

Searle has been in Las Vegas since September, coming from Milwaukee where he worked with 15 YMCA branches. Needless to say, Las Vegas is a little bit different from Wisconsin.

"Here it is an uphill battle to get enough exposure and provide the public with access to the YMCA, but it's growing," he said. "It's definitely a community that is underserved, when you think about having three locations for all the people who live here. But there is no fixed number of how many there should be, and that's the goal, that's what attracted me to Las Vegas -- the chance to grow. It takes time."

Searle said the programming here is similar to what he's used to, with an emphasis on aquatics and youth sports. Day camps and specialty youth camps like rock climbing or equestrian events are among the most popular activities at Durango Hills.

"We try to tweak the agenda so it's current, so we can offer popular themes," he said. "The makeup of each YMCA is different due to the community it serves."

The YMCA of Southern Nevada -- one of nearly 2,600 across the country, making up the largest nonprofit community service organization in the country -- is not finished expanding.

"Now that we have that triangle in the northwest covered, we are looking at the future, and we own property off of Russell (Road) and Stephanie (Street)," Lubbe said. "We're in the early planning stages, doing market research and studies to tell us what type of facility will be the best. And as far as another (partnership), there are so many mature recreation centers in Vegas' different municipalities, and they each approach things differently. Our link with the city of Las Vegas enabled us to expand into an underserved area, and we'll just have to see if another opportunity like that comes up."