Ozaukee YMCA to celebrate a milestone

Thursday, Aug. 22, is a milestone day for the Feith Family Ozaukee YMCA — the 20th anniversary of the day the Saukville facility opened its doors.

Coincidentally, it’s just a few months before the Kettle Moraine YMCA celebrates its five-year anniversary of acquiring the Feith Y.

To celebrate these milestones, the YMCA is holding a community picnic and rededication of the Feith Family YMCA from 4 to 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 24.

The event will include music by the Shad Lads, a pig and corn roast starting at 5 p.m., a bounce house and, of course, family activities. Those attending are asked to bring chairs and blankets to sit on.

“That’s the core of what we’re about, family,” said Rob Johnson, executive director of the Kettle Moraine YMCA, which owns and operates the Feith Y.

The celebration will include a rededication of the Saukville Y, including laying of a new time capsule, at 5:30 p.m. 

Among those attending the celebration will be Elizabeth Feith, who with her late husband John provided $2 million in donations to spur formation of the YMCA, and her son John Jr. 

“The YMCA would not have existed without their support,” Johnson said.

But the Y is much more than its donors, he said, and the event is intended to honor that fact.

“Ultimately, this is just a celebration for the community and of the community,” Johnson said. “We’ve had amazing community support.”

That wasn’t always so, and it wasn’t an easy task to attract a YMCA to the area. There were several attempts at it through the years, none successful until the Northern Ozaukee YMCA Initiative was formed in the early 1990s.

After years of work, the Milwaukee Metropolitan YMCA agreed to take on Ozaukee County as an affiliate.

The Metro Y brought a level of experience to the effort that hadn’t been realized before, including a director and expertise in building and fundraising. 

That, along with lead gifts from the Feiths and $500,000 from John and Linda Mellowes, spurred other donations and led to the Ozaukee County facility. 

There were, of course, curves along the way. The YMCA was originally envisioned to be built along Highway 33, next to a new Port Washington municipal pool, but that plan fell through and the facility was constructed instead on 22 acres in Saukville donated in part by Gene Fransee.

The $6.7 million Feith Family Ozaukee YMCA opened on Aug. 22, 1999, and all seemed to go well until the Metro Y experienced financial issues and went through bankruptcy reorganization in 2014.

There were fears the local Y might close, but it was ultimately purchased by the Kettle Moraine YMCA at an auction after the local community raised almost $1 million, half of which went toward the $2 million purchase price and the rest for deferred maintenance projects.

Since Kettle Moraine took over the Feith Family YMCA, membership has increased 60%, and programming has increased substantially as well, Johnson said.

“I think the community had lost faith in the Y (when Kettle Moraine purchased it),” he said. “But I think we’ve proven ourselves. We’ve tried to be good stewards and reinvest in the facility and the community has embraced us.”

But even as the Feith Family YMCA celebrates its history, it is looking ahead. Johnson said that over the past year the Y has been looking at its options to expand, completing a wetland deliniation and geotechnical survey to see where any expansion can occur.

It’s also just completed a feasibility study that will be presented to its board in the coming months to determine if it will conduct a capital campaign and what it will look like.

Some of the biggest needs identified by the community are for increased child care, senior programming and family programming, Johnson said.