Easley YMCA launches campaign to build $17.5M campus

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The Easley YMCA announced a $3 million capital campaign on Tuesday to build new facilities on the same grounds where generations of Y members have participated in the organization’s activities since 1960.

The campaign is part of an overall $17.5 million building plan to bring the Easley YMCA’s facilities to a level that matches its modern campuses in Pickens and Powdersville. Although the Easley campus is the original home to the organization now called the YMCA of Easley, Pickens and Powdersville, it is the least used, hampered by its aging facilities and tight space.

As part of Tuesday’s announcement, YMCA President and CEO Sid Collins announced a new name for the facilities: the Easley YMCA at the McKissick Campus. Smyth McKissick III, who as a young boy held his father’s hand as the family accepted the first membership in 1961, was presented a lifetime membership for his family.

McKissick is chairman of the Clemson University Board of Trustees and CEO of Alice Co. The McKissick family and Alice Co. have supported the YMCA in Easley from the beginning, with E.S. McKissick being part of the first board selected on Aug. 9, 1957. The family also donated the land. The McKissick Foundation provided the lead gift for the current campaign.

Collins pointed out that many of the people leading the capital campaign are the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the organization’s founders in Easley.

To meet the future needs of the Easley community, the new Easley YMCA at the McKissick Campus will include a 55,500 square foot YMCA with state-of-the-art cardio and strength centers, dedicated group exercise and spin rooms, and a functional training room with indoor and outdoor workout spaces.

A full-court basketball gym will have an elevated walking track that features an enclosed indoor slide down to the Y’s lobby. A nursery and a childwatch room will allow parents to exercise while Y staff care for their children, and a teen room will offer a place for youth to hang out, according to a news release.

The campus will include a new aquatic complex with a lap pool, zero-entry play pool with water features and large water slides. Two athletic fields, multiple playgrounds around the campus and a half-mile walking track around the site will complete the Easley YMCA at the McKissick Campus, the release said.

The existing 22,000-square-foot YMCA will be renovated in a second phase to be a large child development center and an adjoining senior center. The vision is for the children and the seniors to interact by eating lunch together, taking part in activities together and with seniors and children reading to each other. The cognitive benefit will be significant for both the children and seniors, Collins said.

The senior center will be operated in partnership with Pickens County Meals on Wheels.

“The mission of the Y is still alive, thriving and stands as a beacon of hope for thousands of people in this community,” Collins said in a news release. “The YMCA movement has been around for nearly 177 years, and we know our Christian mission changes lives in a positive way. We want to celebrate the blessings we have and what we are going to be able to do with those blessings in the near future.”

Collins said he hopes to begin construction this fall and open the center early in 2023.

Charles and Libby Dalton are serving as co-chairs of the campaign. He said Tuesday that early support has already topped $2 million.

“Libby and I were honored when we were given the opportunity to be involved in the YMCA capital campaign,” Charles Dalton said. “We gladly accepted this opportunity because both of us are indebted to Pickens County and its people. I was born and raised in the county and both of us spent most of our adult years working here. Libby’s last job, before retiring, was president and CEO of the Pickens County YMCA. It is very meaningful to us now to have a chance to give back to Pickens County through this wonderful project.”

The building of the new Easley YMCA campus is a $17.5 million project that is made possible by a public/private partnership of funding through loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Truist Bank.