Third Ward YMCA gets set to make comeback

By the start of the new century, though, the iconic bastion of community pride had fallen on hard times. Membership had dropped by 90 percent. Plumbing leaked and air conditioning gasped asthmatically. Six million dollars hurled at the problems seemed to have little effect.

Replay

Skip

Ads by

Read More

Replace instead of repair

YMCA officials — despite community protests — closed the branch in May 2005.

"I told everybody it was like an old car," South Central executive director Mark Boudreaux said. "Instead of patching it up, let's get a new car. A new Toyota or a Nissan Maxima. That will bring in a lot of folks. That will be doing it right."

Now, after months of searching for suitable property in the competitive, sometimes pricey Third Ward real estate market, the YMCA appears close to reaching an agreement with the city for a seven-acre site near the Sunnyside neighborhood.

"It's a superb location," YMCA CEO Clark Baker said of the still-undisclosed site. "Everyone's going to say, 'I can't believe you can do this.' "

Baker said the $10 million facility should open in 2009.

The new branch will feature the usual YMCA amenities — athletic fields, gymnasium, swimming pool, community meeting rooms.

"There will be a water park with water toys and spray park, not just your six-lane lap pool," Baker said. "We'll have a cardiovascular center and aerobics studio. We'll have a developmental center for kids while their parents are working out. This won't be just baby-sitting. We'll have a curriculum."

In addition, the Y will provide a learning center where patrons will have access to computers and computer instruction. The center and its programs, he said, are still in the developmental stage, with input from the Houston Public Library and school system.

Based on community surveys, which enthusiastically endorsed the Sunnyside location, as many as 10,000 people may use the new YMCA branch, Baker said. The location is on a METRO bus line.

Programs in exile

Since the branch on Wheeler Avenue closed, its programs have been moved to other locations. Children attending its day-care center have had the option of moving to the YMCA's Texas Medical Center branch.

Boudreaux, who became South Central's chief in 2000, said population shifts in its service area undercut the Wheeler Avenue Y.

"I'm not a super-historian," he said, "but my feeling was that segregation in the 1950s and '60s helped make this a community hub. A lot of blacks couldn't go to the Hilton. All of the events, the banquets and rites of passage, happened at the YMCA. A lot of community leaders and politicians running for office would come to the Y with their campaigns. Over the years, in the '80s and '90s, a lot of people moved out to get better housing. A lot of leadership and community leaders kind of left."

In its last days, the Wheeler branch had numerous problems.

"To be honest, the mechanicals had problems. The flooring had issues. The plumbing had issues ... ," he said. "Texas Southern University closed Wheeler, so we didn't have the access of a through street anymore. We were kind of landlocked."

Trading work for play

Without sufficient playing fields, the Y's young athletes had to hold their games on the grounds of a neighboring church. "We cut their grass," Boudreaux recalled, "and they let us use their field."

Toward the end, Baker said, the South Central YMCA was losing about $500,000 a year.

The building was sold to TSU.

"We were very upset when it closed," said Veronica Deboest, a 15-year patron. "It gave the kids somewhere to go. It was just two or three blocks from where they lived."

The Y has made a good-faith effort to fill the gaps caused by the closure, Deboest said. A bus takes young basketball players to games. And she agrees the new branch will offer expanded services. Still, she worried, the new branch may lack the coziness of the old, and some potential patrons may lack the bus fare to get there.

South Central was the first YMCA to serve Houston's black community, and its creation was an uphill fight, recalled Quentin Mease, the branch's first executive director.

Mease, the son of an Iowa coal miner who dabbled in business and politics, had virtually grown up in the YMCA. His father was director of his hometown Y for roughly 20 years, he said, "and I used to accompany him to the board meetings."

Though professionally trained as an engineer, Mease found himself drawn into YMCA work. In 1948, after receiving numerous offers around the nation for Y employment, he arrived in Houston to find YMCA supporters in an uproar.

Building put on hold

Just before World War II's outbreak, approximately $60,000 had been collected to build a black YMCA in the Third Ward. As the war advanced, however, nothing further was done.

In racially split, segregated Houston, blacks grew suspicious of, then angry toward, the white YMCA leaders whom they suspected of misappropriating funds.

In this politically delicate situation, Mease, who determined that the funds were safely held in a bank, was faced with rebuilding intercommunity trust — and getting the Y built.

South Central opened in 1955 adjacent to TSU. It became home to the Rotary-like Business and Professional Men's Club. By the late 1950s, it had become the premier spot for black and white politicians and business leaders to meet.

South Central became a center for the civil rights movement in Houston when, in the 1960s, TSU President Samuel Nabrit stopped allowing activists to meet on campus. Mease, who opened the Y's doors to organizational activity, mentored the young leaders and became a major behind-the-scenes civil rights figure.

"That YMCA played a pivotal role in Houston's integration," Baker said. "Anything that happened in the Third Ward happened there. It was a neutral place, a gathering place, clearly a hub. That YMCA had a very warm spot in the heart. But, you know, you can only live on that for so long.

"The questions we face now are: ''What have you done for me today? What will you do for me tomorrow?' "

allan.turner@chron.com