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Show us interest -- with money
(by Dave Lange - January 05, 2011)
COUNTY LINE, BY DAVE LANGE
Show us interest -- with money
Here's a bit of advice for the folks who are exploring the possibilities for a "bigger and better" Chagrin Valley Recreation Center in Chagrin Falls. Hang onto your wallets!
That is based on the notion that the YMCA of Greater Cleveland has a genuine interest in helping make the dream come true for a year-round community center, complete with indoor and outdoor swimming pools and a fitness area. Unfortunately, the YMCA of Greater Cleveland has a long history of making empty promises to the Chagrin Valley and walking away with money from it.
The first thing that the Chagrin Valley Recreation Council and organizers of this multimillion-dollar project should do is ask the YMCA for a small token of trust and support. A good place to start would be the $500,000 bequest that the late Cleveland industrialist Howard van den Eynden and his wife left to the YMCA in 1988 with the specific understanding that it was to be used to build a new Valley Y, complete with swimming pool, multipurpose sports arena and child-care facilities.
After getting that deposit in hand, they should request a copy of the YMCA's 1993 marketing study, complete with demographic documentation, to support its contention at that time that the Chagrin Valley lacked sufficient population density to support a full-purpose recreation facility. Along with that, they should be provided with a copy of the 1997 study, along with appropriate documentation, to show that Munson Township would be a better location for a YMCA for some reason other than the fact that Heather Hill Hospital was paying to build it.
Then the Chagrin Valley group should ask for the receipts showing how that $500,000 gift in 1988 eventually was used instead for improvements at the Centerville Mills YMCA Camp in Bainbridge. The camp was so rundown when it was sold to Bainbridge Township for $1.9 million in 2003 that many of the facilities had to be abandoned or dismantled.
In addition to learning what happened to that $1.9 million, the recreation center organizers should ask the YMCA how much money it made by selling off a large section of Centerville Mills for an Aurora housing development in 1994. Not only that, but a huge tract of land off Pettibone Road in Bainbridge that had been donated to the YMCA earlier was sold for a major subdivision in the 1970s.
After claiming that Centerville Mills was no longer viable as a camping facility and initially planning to sell the land for yet another housing development, the YMCA insisted as part of its deal with Bainbridge that the township pay $54,000 annually for the YMCA to continue its camping programs there for five more years. In other words, camping would be viable after all, if the taxpayers could be coerced into paying for it.
Now, it's quite possible that the YMCA of Greater Cleveland, being under new leadership, is more willing to share the documentation that it has refused to make public in the past. If the YMCA truly wants to be a partner with the Chagrin Valley now -- after walking away with its $500,000 bequest in 1988, shunning it as a viable community five years later and profiting immensely from the sale of its pristine land for development -- it could prove it by coming clean with facts and figures.
Twenty-two years after breaking the promise to build a YMCA in the Chagrin Valley, it's time to show us the interest -- with money.
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