YMCA Purchases Industrial Park Building

The Door County YMCA has purchased the former Sneakers and Boots building located in the Sturgeon Bay Industrial Park to be used as a multi-function facility. Many of the activities they will undertake in this building will revolve around the education and care of young children and recreation of working adults.

According to Tom Beerntsen, president and CEO of the Door County YMCA, “Our primary consideration in purchasing this building is to provide a permanent home for our 11 week-long summer camp program. This YMCA program, run for more than 20 years, witnessed substantial growth in 2013 with an average daily attendance of 102 children. This remarkable growth was due in part to the fact that, similarly to our daycare center, we are now licensed to accept children there who qualify for state subsidies for their care. We believe also that this site will provide an outstanding location to host our School Day Out Program, which provides activities for school-age children on both scheduled days off during the school year and unscheduled days off due to inclement weather.”

The Door County YMCA’s Summer Camp curriculum includes reducing summer learning loss, daily physical activity, healthy nutrition education and individualized growth and achievement for each participant, all the while ensuring that the children in Door County are having a fun and safe summer experience.

Additional uses of this facility include expanding the highly successful Summer Foods Program. In an effort to ensure that all children in our community have access to balanced nutritious meals during the summer months and arrive back to school in fall ready to learn (more than 50 percent of Sturgeon Bay students qualify for free or reduced lunch during the school year), the Summer Foods Program provides free meals all summer to any child in Sturgeon Bay at several locations.

Plans for the fall include expanding daycare and some after school care to this facility as the need arises.

“The purchase of this facility will allow us additional flexibility as we seek ways to meet the challenges presented by future gaps and needs of our community,” said Beerntsen. “Our goal will be to raise funds to offset a significant portion of the cost of the facility and improvements so we can continue to ensure the level of programming the community has come to expect from the YMCA as evidenced by the Five Star Rating we have been awarded at the Barker YMCA Child Care Center.”