Struggling with an annual deficit of one million dollars, the downtown Montreal YMCA building on Drummond Street will soon be put up for sale, the YMCAs of Quebec announced Tuesday.
The sports facilities at the downtown Y, which had been closed since March 2020, had never resumed their activities. However, the pandemic and teleworking have changed the habits of users and income from training activities which finance the Y’s activities had started to decline even before the pandemic, explains the president and CEO of the YMCAs of Quebec, Stéphane Vaillancourt, in interview. The YMCA of Quebec organization therefore chose to use a broker to sell the building and relocate the Y’s activities elsewhere in the Peter-McGill district as a tenant.
“It’s the responsible thing to do,” says Mr. Vaillancourt. “The proceeds from the sale will allow us to relocate elsewhere, but also to fund a fund to support our mission. […] We choose to take charge of our future rather than die slowly. »
A house too big
The building on Drummond Street has an area of 140,000 square feet and has seven floors plus a basement. On the land roll, the value of the building reaches 25.5 million. The Y’s current activities, which include a language school, a youth zone, community services and administrative services, only occupy a third of the building. “Our house has become too big for our means, essentially,” says Stéphane Vaillancourt.
By moving elsewhere, the Y plans to offer physical activities again, but according to “a new formula”.
Stéphane Vaillancourt, however, insists on the fact that his organization wishes to sell the current building to a developer who will retain a social component without knowing what type of development will be done there. “We are a charitable organization. We want a mixed-use project. Even if we leave the site, we want to be very attentive to how the site will develop. It’s very important for us that there is a social component on the site, he says. We want to find a broker who will have this sensitivity who will help us a promoter who will also have this sensitivity. »
Closures
In 2019, the training centers of three YMCAs closed their doors in Montreal, namely that of the Guy-Favreau center and those located in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Pointe-Saint-Charles.In 2020, the City of Montreal purchased land adjacent to the Notre-Dame-de-Grâce YMCA with the intention of developing a park there and building social housing. The following year, the City of Pointe-Claire acquired the West Island YMCA building, which allowed the Y to maintain its activities there.
Despite the reduction in training activities in several YMCAs, Stéphane Vaillancourt ensures that the network is in good financial health. Currently, the organization has around forty points of service in Quebec and around twenty in the rest of Canada and abroad.