A long-awaited YMCA in Palm Coast’s Town Center will be an arrestingly built 44,000 square-foot, two-level facility with a wellness center, a spin room, a fitness room, a gym with three volleyball courts and an outdoor Olympic swimming pool, among other amenities.
The swimming pool will have 18 to 21 lanes and a zero-entry section allowing for a sloped walk into the water, without stairs or ladders. The indoor facility will include a child care center.
The plans are brimming, and the YMCA is “ready to get started right away,” Acting City Manager Lauren Johnston said, with construction not necessarily waiting to have all fundraising sums in hand.
The facility would be built off Central Avenue on 12 acres adjacent to what used to be the grounds of the Palm Coast Arts Foundation. The city is operating the stage there for special events.
As designed, the building’s cantilevered and battered-glass architecture projects a sleek, self-assured airiness that blurs the line between indoor and outdoor. Wing-like white roofs make the building seem as if it is gliding into its Town Center environment rather than towering over it like the Promenade development down the road. But both buildings will lift Town Center’s profile and add aesthetic rewards to their community benefits.
The Palm Coast City Council will get the long-awaited reveal in a presentation by city and YMCA staff at a workshop Tuesday. The city will also be asked to chip in some money.
“They’ll have an ask from the city, and then they’ll do a fundraising campaign,” Johnston said, with that ask estimated to be around $3 million, though the source doesn’t have to be the city alone, especially since the school district and the county have been looking for a YMCA to offer amenities they do not. The city is already donating the land–a substantial gift of prime real estate near booming surroundings that would .
“Part of the sell to a fundraising to make sure it’s actually happening is having community support,” Johnston said. “So is the city invested in having this? If so, is there a contribution? Is the school district invested in having this? If so, is there a contribution? Is the county invested in doing this? And if so, is there a contribution.”
The Flagler County School Board last year closed traditional public access to its Belle Terre Swim and Racquet Club, reserving it for students, with hopes that an eventual YMCA would fill the greater need. It has never indicated that it would consider making contributions either to help underwrite a YMCA or to help the city defray its costs at the Aquatic Center, also known as Frieda Zamba pool.
The YMCA organization is not coming empty-handed. The Volusia-Flagler YMCA in 2023 had sought $3 million in state appropriations, with $1 million of that earmarked for the Palm Coast project. It received $5 million. In 2024, Palm Coast had high hopes for an additional $6 million exclusively for the Palm Coast project. The Legislature appropriated it. Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed it. But a separate $3 million appropriation went to the Volusia-Flagler YMCA.
The organization would have a local board that will lead the fundraising. It plans to “run the fundraiser and construction process simultaneously,” Johnston said. “They want to break ground, use some of their appropriation money on design and permitting, and they they want to get started right away.”
The Volusia-Flagler YMCA runs six facilities and a camp, all in Volusia County, with over 37,000 members and 50,000 participants, on a $12.9 million budget. It last operated a YMCA in Palm Coast in 2011, at what was then known as Florida Hospital Flagler. That facility closed 14 years ago, after nearly 10 years at the hospital. There never was a swimming pool. The YMCA has sought to open a stand-alone facility here since.
Council members will discuss the YMC in conjunction with the city-owned Aquatic Center, which, in Johnston’s understated words, “needs a lot of love.” In other words its 25-meter pool with eight lanes and surrounding tennis courts and facilities need substantial repairs and upgrades.
The YMCA has indicated that if the city wanted it to manage the pool, it would do so, Johnston said. But the council must decide where the Acquatic Center fits in if and when the YMCA opens, and if it’s worth continuing to spend money there. “Do we want to put the money into the facility? Should it be repurposed once the new Olympic-size pool is built?” Johnston said. “Those are all questions for city council to answer and decide based off of what the public wants in our community.”
