Jordan Beck | Daily Press Gary Nash, executive director of the Northern Lights YMCA, speaks about plans for a multimillion-dollar expansion and remodeling project at the YMCA building on Bay College’s Escanaba campus Wednesday. A tentative floor plan for the facility is also pictured.

ESCANABA — The Northern Lights YMCA is aiming to make substantial improvements to its building on Bay College’s Escanaba campus. Plans for a multimillion-dollar expansion and remodeling project at the facility were discussed during a special meeting of the Bay College Board of Trustees Wednesday.

An athletic addition to the Northern Lights YMCA building, where Bay College’s gymnasium facility is located, was completed in the fall of 2019. The improvements discussed Wednesday will be part of a separate project the Northern Lights YMCA is handling itself.

Gary Nash, executive director of the Northern Lights YMCA, said the facility currently has no space for members to socialize, among other limitations.

“We have had a long time of living with just … very, very minimal facilities,” he said.

The project will follow in the footsteps of past fundraising campaigns for the YMCA in Escanaba. It will also follow a campaign held in support of changes to the Northern Lights YMCA building in Dickinson County.

“That was a successful campaign … to rebuild that YMCA,” Nash said.

Blomquist Architects Principal Architect Kyle Blomquist discussed plans for the project in Escanaba. During his portion of the presentation, Blomquist showed board members a tentative floor plan for the improved Northern Lights YMCA building and mockups of the facility. Current plans call for new spaces to be added to the Northern Lights YMCA building and for existing spaces to be remodeled.

Improvements to the building are expected to include an entry concourse, a members’ lounge and other social spaces, a new fitness center, multipurpose spaces, renovated locker rooms and a second gym with a regulation high school basketball court.

“This area is also designed so that, if it has to be phased because of funding restrictions as you’re going through your capital campaign, that that is easily done,” Blomquist said of the latter space.

The building is set to receive a new public entrance facing the highway, as well.

Earlier versions of the floor plan called for childcare space to be built at the facility. However, that is no longer the case due to the Northern Lights YMCA’s purchase of the former Wells Elementary School building, where these services are now being offered.

“(Those) programmatic burdens have been removed from this campus, and that allows the area to the north to be returned to Bay College for a … possible future expansion of your athletic program,” Blomquist said.

Northern Lights YMCA Fund Development and Wells Center Director Caron Salo spoke about the project’s timeline and funding.

“We really started off probably in 2017, but got really hitting the bricks hard in 2018,” she said.

Based on current plans, the project is expected to cost a total of $6.4 million, of which roughly $300,000 would go towards improvements to the building in Wells. It will be fully funded by donations raised by the Northern Lights YMCA.

The Hannahville Indian Community contributed $4.8 million through November 2042 towards improvements to Bay’s gymnasium facility and other areas of the Northern Lights YMCA building. The community’s contribution is covering a $3 million private bond and $1.8 million in interest.

$1 million of the bond was designated for the athletic addition. The remaining $2 million is set to be used to match public donations towards a fundraising campaign for the Northern Lights YMCA project.

The fundraising campaign will take place in three distinct phases. According to Salo, the project is still in its “pre-campaign” phase. In this phase, a community study was done, the scope of the project was defined, pro formas and budgets were worked on, and construction management proposals were obtained.

The pre-campaign phase will be followed by the “quiet campaign” phase, in which 40 to 50 donors who are expected to provide 90 percent of donations to the project will be contacted. The project’s goal may be adjusted based on what is raised during the quiet campaign phase.

Once the quiet campaign has concluded, Salo said the “public campaign” phase will begin.

“That’s where we have the balloons in the air, we have all of the community involved, we announce it publicly,” she said.

While the plans shown at Wednesday’s meeting are indicative of what the Northern Lights YMCA is hoping to accomplish at its Escanaba facility, Salo said these plans may end up changing in the future.

“We will build what the community gives us, so what we see today may not be what we see in the end,” she said.

Final bidding for work on the project will take place along with the public campaign phase. Salo said the Northern Lights YMCA may be about two years away from breaking ground on the expansion project.

During her section of the presentation, Salo asked board members for their approval of the project.

“We can’t go forward if we don’t have everyone’s blessing to go,” she said.

The board unanimously approved a motion in support of the project during the special meeting.

“It’s impressive, what you’ve done,” Vice Chair Stephen Davis said.

In its regular meeting, which followed Wednesday’s special meeting, the board:

– approved new student fees associated with digital accounting textbooks and reduced the cost of Bay’s social media marketing course.

– agreed to retire its policy on cable television, as the college no longer has cable television service.

– approved a motion acknowledging the efforts of President Laura Coleman and other Bay College employees related to Achieving the Dream. Recently, Achieving the Dream presented Special Recognition Awards to three colleges — including Bay.