AUBURN — The Auburn-Lewiston YMCA officially closed the door on its 2011 expansion plans Wednesday morning, agreeing to focus on new efforts to create a fitness center in Bates Mill No. 5.

Chief Executive Officer Steven Wallace said the Y’s board of directors voted unanimously to investigate plans to move into the Bates Mill complex at its Wednesday morning meeting.

Now the work turns to creating a feasibility study for the move and looking for donors and potential partners to make the project happen.

“So I can tell you that this will be the last thing you hear from us for months and months, because you cannot embark on a capital campaign and talk about what you’re going to do,” Wallace said. “You have to have some investors working with you. We are going to start looking at this proposal and the next time you hear the Y talking about it, it will be because we have a plan together and people interested in it.”

So far, the plan calls for working with Platz Associates and downtown group Grow L+A to develop a state-of-the-art aquatics and fitness center with room for 5,000 members in Lewiston’s Bates Mill No. 5. It would become part of a larger complex that could include a grocery store, office space and common areas.

The YMCA had planned to build its next-generation recreational facility on 93 acres of trees and fields off Center Street in Auburn in an area behind Kmart near the Androscoggin River. The board bought the land in 2011 with a recreation and health facility in mind, but Wallace said that’s changed as of Wednesday. Now, the board supports using that parcel to build a summer camp ringed by recreation trails.

The initial plan also calls for selling the YMCA’s property on Turner Street and possibly Camp Connor on Range Pond in Poland. Both ideas will be investigated, Wallace said.

“We are going to be engaging consultants now and other folks to figure out what this looks like and the feasibility,” Wallace said. “I can say now there are still no promises, but officially the board has said this is what they want to look at.”

Wallace said the board was unanimous in its support of the new direction, and he’s gotten positive feedback from residents since he made the idea public last week.

“It’s great news because there is a lot of enthusiasm,” he said. “The feedback from the community has been 100 percent positive. I have not seen or heard a single negative comment.”

Alan Hahnel, a member of the YMCA board, said the move is a new direction, going away from acting independently in favor of collaboration.

“We can do this, but it’s going to be a lot of hard work and it will take a long time,” he said. “We want Mr. Wallace to see who we can talk to, what kind of collaborations we can develop and go in a new direction for us. It’s one more focused on collaborating than it is going it alone.”

Wallace has plans for an aquatics center with an competition-sized pool for swimming meets, as well as weight rooms, cardio exercise rooms and child care facilities.

“We are looking at an $8 million to $10 million project and planning the Y for the next 20 years,” he said. “That’s going to be a pretty big job, so we need to be very sure that our vision is the community vision and what the community wants.”

staylor@sunjournal.com

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