YWCA signals a move from near-downtown Lafayette home

YWCA leaders say pending downsizing continues a shift from recreational activities to focus on empowering women and other outreach. Plus, Dining Divas make a People’s run. And more.

• Thanks today for ongoing help from Based in Lafayette sponsor Long Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Lafayette, presenting a summer lineup of concerts at Loeb Stadium. For tickets for these shows and other events, check out longpac.org.

Click here for tickets or more details.

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YWCA SIGNALS A MOVE FROM NEAR-DOWNTOWN HOME

In the years since YWCA Greater Lafayette closed it swimming pool in 2018, so many of the conversations for the nonprofit organization have dealt with how well the square footage in the North Sixth Street headquarters matched the mission, Lindsey Mickler, president and CEO, says.

The upshot, Mickler said this week: “This space is just too big for us.”

This week, the YWCA signaled that it was ready to look for new office space and find another, better use for a 34,000-square-foot building that opened in 1975 at 605 N. Sixth St.

(Photo: Dave Bangert)

Mickler said the YWCA doesn’t have a firm timeline. She said the YWCA would prefer to stay in or near the Centennial Neighborhood, just north of downtown Lafayette and close to its domestic violence shelter, which will remain across North Sixth Street from the current offices with 15 employees.

But she that as the YWCA continues to distance itself from recreational activities – and the large spaces needed for them – and focuses on work outside 605 N. Sixth St., the pending downsizing makes sense.

“We acknowledge that our services, by and large, happen across the street, with our domestic violence intervention and prevention program and our 30-bed emergency crisis shelter, and throughout the state with our 36 counties that we serve with our women's wellness program,” Mickler said. “And then you add in COVID. I think, naturally a lot of organizations and a lot of businesses looked at brick-and-mortar structures and said, What's our need? What's the cost versus the return on investment.”

The announcement came this week as a way to start a conversation in the community that could find another use and a better fit for the office space.

“Our hope is that we could partner with community leaders and nonprofit organizations to use this building to further serve the Lafayette community,” Nathan Dunbar, YWCA board president, said.

Dennis Carson, Lafayette’s economic development director, said he knew the YWCA had been thinking about a new space and location.

“We, the city, have been and will continue to be supportive of the YWCA and will do what we can to help and support a move if need be,” Carson said. “They have been a good partner in the Centennial Neighborhood, and I’m sure they would be supportive of the YWCA’s decision. Of course both of us, the city and the neighborhood, would like to see a good and contributing use of the facility if they choose to move and sell the building.”

In 2018, the YWCA drained and closed its 75-by-40-foot lap pool, first opened in 1990. The YWCA had shut it down in 2009, too, due to financial issues. Reopened in 2014 with big fanfare as the Schleman Natatorium – named for Helen Schleman, legendary dean of women at Purdue – the pool didn’t generate the revenues the YWCA had anticipated and closed after four years.

Mickler said the YWCA still hosts some recreational activities, including noon pickup basketball games and pickleball and the Y-Dance program. The facility also has a 1,300-square-foot shared commercial and commissary kitchen space for rent for culinary entrepreneurs.

Mickler said the YWCA’s national and global movement has been to focusing and aligning programming around missions of eliminating racism and empowering women. That, she said, had YWCA Greater Lafayette moving more toward the outreach of social services and away from recreational activities. Mickler said the YWCA also was coping with some funding losses, including cuts in federal Victims of Crime Act grants that have meant $209,000 lost in the past four years, with expectations of another 40% cut for the 2026-28 funding cycle. That, she said, is the potential for another $300,000.

The building at 605 N. Sixth St. – “long on hallways, short on offices,” she said – doesn’t fit the YWCA the way it once did.

“All these things are playing into realizing that we’re spending a lot of money to keep lights on in a 34,000-square-foot space,” Mickler said. “We’re just trying to make the best decision that meets not only our needs now, but really anticipating future needs and how we best serve the community. … We've been here in the community since 1929, so this is not about us up and leaving. This is really saying, how do we do what is most effective and efficient for us and to be able to sustain the mission?”

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OTHER READS …

• Details are still being worked out in the 1000 block of Main Street, the site of Lafayette’s first Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area, approved in June by the city council. Restaurants on the downtown Lafayette block asked the city to make it a pilot site for a carry-out alcohol concept now allowed by the state. And Mayor Tony Roswarski has said other parts of downtown could be pulled in, too, once the DORA rolls out and any kinks get worked out. Against that backdrop, Indianapolis Star reporter John Tuohy had a story about a dispute 57 miles away in Noblesville, where Hamilton County commissioners are looking to block alcohol consumption on county-owned property in a city-approved Designated Outdoor Refreshment Area. Here’s the story: “'All for money': Indiana city, county spar over where alcohol will be allowed outdoors.” And for more about the inspiration for Lafayette’s DORA:

• Indiana Capital Chronicle reporter Casey Smith went looking for answers about the state’s acquisition of pentobarbital, which is expected to be the means for Indiana’s first executions since 2009, opening a piece Friday this way: “After state officials announced last week that Indiana will resume executions for the first time in over a decade, secrecy largely shrouds the new drug, pentobarbital, acquired for the impending lethal injections.” Here’s more: “What is pentobarbital? More questions than answers surround Indiana’s new execution drug.”

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DINING DIVAS AND DUDES MAKE A PEOPLE’S RUN

Dining Divas and Dudes is a team that has been reporting and rating new restaurants, hidden gems, international fare and updated menus from old favorites for years now at homeofpurdue.com. Here at Based in Lafayette, we feature some of Dining Divas and Dudes’ best and most recent finds. Recently, they went to People’s Brewing Co., 2006 N. Ninth St. in Lafayette. From the review: “You like beer? Get over here! … We realized when we got our food that for some reason, the fantastic food here is more of a well-kept secret than we need it to be.”

• Read the full Dining Divas and Dudes post/review here: “People’s Brewing Company: Beer for the people.”

Thanks, again, to Based in Lafayette sponsor Long Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Lafayette. For information on upcoming events, including the summer season at Loeb Stadium, go to longpac.org.

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