SEQUIM — Most who responded to a feasibility survey supported the idea of Olympic Peninsula YMCA managing the Sequim Aquatic Recreation Center, the firm that conducted the survey announced Wednesday.
The study was conducted over a three-week period in October and is expected to be published online sometime in the next month, Kyle Cronk, YMCA director, said Wednesday.
The exercise center at 610 N. Fifth Ave., which is known as SARC and which has the city’s only public pool, was closed Oct. 30.
The SARC board cited lack of funds and said the center could reopen if an agreement were reached with the YMCA.
Sixty-nine percent of the Sequim-area residents surveyed were in favor of a YMCA-SARC partnership, said Joanne Vega, director of Strategic Research Associates of Spokane, which conducted the survey.
“Most respondents of the population were supportive of the YMCA presenting a proposal to manage SARC, regardless of their interest to join,” Vega said during a presentation Wednesday morning at the Sequim Civic Center.
About 100 people attended the meeting. Among them were four Sequim City Council members, SARC board members, Sequim Schools Superintendent Gary Neal and Eric Lewis, Olympic Medical Center CEO.
The city of Sequim, YMCA, SARC, Clallam County, OMC, Sequim School District and private donors provided money for the $36,000 feasibility study and are working together on the proposal, Cronk said.
The research firm collected responses from 245 SARC members and 404 non-SARC members via telephone, and another 784 responses online, Vega said.
“To reach the community, we called by telephone all of your landline and cellular phone numbers that we could find within the Sequim ZIP code,” she said.
The telephone survey took an average of 10 to 13 minutes to complete, she said.
The level of respondents, especially online, was well over what was expected for a community of Sequim’s size, she said.
“We had an overwhelming response online — probably the strongest response I have ever seen,” she said.
The firm needed only about 400 responses to form a cohesive statistical average, she said.
“We try to do a sampling of the population,” which can be generalized “towards the rest of the community.”
About 12.4 percent of the market is potentially interested in becoming a member, she said.
Based on the survey, “we are looking at . . . about 374 two-adult family memberships, 87 single-adult family memberships, 586 individual-adult memberships and six young adult memberships,” she said.
The next step for the YMCA is to prepare a business plan and present that to the SARC board for approval.
While Cronk has in the past said a business plan would be presented sometime this month, on Wednesday, the date had been pushed back by a month or two because of the holiday season and to allow time for the YMCA to formulate a comprehensive proposal.
With its community partners, the YMCA is working to “figure out a sustainable operating model,” he said.
“We would not be able to operate in the red. From the YMCA’s perspective, we need to fully fund our reserves to make sure that we can invest back into the facility.
“That would be true with any sort of management agreement that we could come up with.”
Upon approval of a plan, YMCA would come in as a contractor to maintain day-to-day operations, but the SARC board would remain intact and could call for tax levies in the future if needed, Frank Pickering, SARC board chair, has said.
However, Cronk said Wednesday it is the YMCA’s goal to be self-sustaining to prevent any further request of revenue from the public through taxes.
“YMCA revenue is usually about 60 percent membership, 25 [percent] to 30 percent of program fees and about 10 [percent] to 15 percent of contributed support” through donations, he said.
During the transition phase, renovations would begin at the facility and would need to be completed before it reopened to the public, Cronk said.
“There is probably a window of three months that we are talking [about], at least,” he said.
The fate of valid annual and biannual passes for SARC remains in a state of limbo, with refunds not currently available.
The sale of annual passes was discontinued in June, and biannual passes stopped being sold in September, Scott Deschenes, former SARC director, has said.
The SARC board has placed all outstanding passes in a state of suspension but has not canceled them.
It remains to be seen if outstanding passes will be honored if the athletic center reopens under management of the YMCA in partnership with the SARC board — a possibility currently being explored — Pickering has said.
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Chris McDaniel can be reached at 360-681-2390, ext. 5052, or cmcdaniel@peninsuladailynews.com.
