At first glance, the Eugene Y looks to be sitting pretty. Its new Don Stathos Campus on 24th Avenue in south Eugene is packed morning till night. The old indoor tennis/pickleball center two blocks away on Patterson Street is a beehive. The Eugene Family YMCA’s finances are strong. The $50 million Don Stathos building was constructed almost entirely with donations and a large state grant. The Y has only about $2 million in debt, incurred partly for demolishing the old Y on Patterson.
All must be well, right?
Hardly. An increasingly tense dispute is being waged between tennis and pickleball players on the one side, and the Y’s leaders on the other, about the future of the 2.7-acre Patterson property. Court players fear they are being gradually squeezed out by a Y leadership intent on using the site for a kaleidoscope of activities, from summer camps to movie nights.
The 2121 Patterson property offers plenty of real estate. An acre is taken up by the 26,000-square-foot indoor tennis/pickleball building — where four tennis courts double as 12 pickleball courts — and related parking. The remaining 1.7 acres is bare, where the old Y was demolished two and a half years ago.
Even before that demolition, the nonprofit’s leaders were sweating over what to do with the property.
Decisions and revisions
Last month, the Y’s board announced via email to the Y’s roughly 20,000 members they had made some decisions about the site. Mostly, the decisions are vague and tentative. First, and most painful to the court players: the Y will build no more tennis/pickleball courts. Players see that as a betrayal of previous leadership promises.
Second: the Y won’t promise that the tennis/pickleball building will be used permanently for tennis/pickleball. Players interpret that to mean the Y at any time may put the building to new uses. And third: Y leaders have a cluster of general ideas for how to use the vacant Patterson acreage. Consultants are sketching plans and costs, but nothing is final, says Eugene YMCA CEO Brian Steffen.
While players lobby to protect their courts, Y leaders take a different perspective. The Y’s “three pillars” are “youth development, healthy living and social responsibility,” Steffen says. The Y’s programs should reflect that, he says.
So, for example, Steffen says he wants to increase access to tennis and pickleball, not by adding courts, but by scheduling more introductory and group-type play on the existing courts. That will cut times reserved for traditional singles or team play. Tennis/pickleball players see that as yet another stab.
“For right now, we view [tennis and pickleball] as great tools, great activities. They are part of our programming plan and vision, so we are not anticipating a decision that does away with either of them,” Steffen tells Eugene Weekly.
Movie nights, potlucks
Steffen’s carefully worded statements unnerve tennis/pickleball members, who number about 750. They pay an extra $30 a month to use the courts, on top of regular membership fees. Rainy Eugene has few other indoor venues for the two sports.
“It feels like the Y is trying to be everything to everybody — family movie nights, book clubs, potlucks — instead of focusing on serving their loyal membership well,” says Jennifer Snelling, a Y tennis player.
“We welcome the idea of introducing more people to tennis and pickleball,” she says. “But without adding more courts to accommodate the new people [the Y] is welcoming in, its current tennis and pickleball members will see reduced access or displacement.”
Pickleball member Charley Jaspera concurs. “I feel that the Y board views the players as a pesky minority compared to a larger number of community members who apparently want light recreation, child care and a place to socialize.”
After-school care
Steffen says the Y board is considering a few concepts for the vacant Patterson acreage:
• Youth and childcare, summer camps and afterschool programs.
• Group fitness. The Don Stathos building already offers scores of group fitness programs a week, and most are fully booked. “There is a really significant need for more group fitness space,” Steffen says.
• A covered pavilion for festivals, events and recreation.
To handle more members at Patterson, the tennis/pickleball center’s office/lobby/bathroom area will need to be torn down and replaced with a much larger version of the same, he says.
“We are trying to finalize the vision for what will go onto the Patterson property by the end of 2026, and have a goal to launch that capital campaign early in 2027,” Steffen says. The rest hinges on how quickly the Y can raise money from donors, he says.
Jaspera says he’s puzzled by the fuzziness of the Y’s plans.
“It’s been more than two years since the demolition of the old Y, and I’m astounded that the Y still has no clear plans for the languishing site on Patterson. Meanwhile, building costs continue to rise,” he says.
Balancing act
But Y leaders have a juggling act. The Y’s most important project is building a Y in underserved northwest Eugene, which Steffen estimates would cost $40 million to $50 million. The Y has talked up that idea for a decade. It’s mulling two spots, but land-use questions remain unresolved.
The Y wants to run a capital campaign for the North Eugene and Patterson projects at roughly the same time, says Steffen. And Y leaders want to keep the Patterson improvements modest so they don’t outshine the North Eugene project and alienate its potential donors.
Yet the Y shouldn’t antagonize tennis and pickleball players either, Snelling warns.
The Y “cannot build a true community hub while displacing the community that already exists,” she says. “Members and potential donors should ask themselves if the Y has shown itself to be a trustworthy community partner that honors its commitments to members.”
Bricks $ Mortar is a column anchored by Christian Wihtol, who worked as an editor and writer at The Register-Guard in Eugene 1990-2018, much of the time focused on real estate, economic development and business. Reach him at Christian@EugeneWeekly.com.