Wenatchee YMCA To Sell 98-Year-Old Lake Wenatchee Camp

The Wenatchee Valley YMCA (Y) has announced it plans to sell its historic Lake Wenatchee Camp in order to create a multi-million-dollar endowment for outdoor recreation.

The announcement was made on Friday, April 4, and comes after years of deliberation about the potential sale of the 98-year-old site.

"Over the past thirty years, selling the Lake Wenatchee Camp has been on our board's docket three separate times," says Y President and CEO, Dorry Foster. "It started coming up most recently about three years ago when we were in a partnership with the National Y(MCA) and a third-party leader on assessing camps, and their final assessment was that, although we were operating the camp as well as could be expected, with the new child safety standards and the lack of accessibility at the camp, we needed to sell it."

Instead of liquidating the camp at that time, Foster says the board decided to roll up its sleeves and outfit the camp with as many of the necessary upgrades it could afford to keep it running at maximum efficiency. However, despite making numerous modernization efforts and improvements to the property's overall condition, the numbers still didn't pencil.

"At the end of the day, when we pull the data from the past ten years, every year, we can't make it flush. In a good year, we're still losing one-hundred-thousand dollars. Two years ago, we got the state involved with a two-year grant of one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars, and even with that we couldn't make it flush. The operating and capital needs have been over two-million dollars over the course of the past ten years and it's only getting worse."

Foster adds that operational expenses and overhead aren't the only concerns regarding the Lake Wenatchee property.

"Our enrollment has been steadily dropping and we cannot seem to recover. Our workforce has also not been resilient enough to put in a full six to seven weeks during the summer, so we've been having to go three weeks on and one week off for a while and that only allows us five weeks of camp, so we're serving fewer kids."

The Lake Wenatchee Camp is currently averaging about 300 campers annually, including 125 who are from Chelan and Douglas Counties. That figure represents only 1.24% of the total student population for the age groups the Y serves from the school districts within its local area.

The Wenatchee Valley Y's camper volume at Lake Wenatchee has also been reduced by the YMCA of Snohomish County's recent purchase of Camp Casey on Whidbey Island, since about half of Lake Wenatchee's campers have traditionally come from Snohomish County.

"It all kind of came to a head last September," remarks Foster. "I called in the National YMCA for some help through an outreach branch they have called The Thriving Y Team. They came in and I asked them to look at our full operations, including the Lake Wenatchee Camp, and their suggestion was that unless we can do a twenty-million-dollar capital campaign to advance the property and allow for new child safety standards and mandates to happen, that it really doesn't make sense to continue with camp. Our YMCA simply cannot continue to carry that operational debt any longer."

Foster says the decision to sell the Lake Wenatchee Camp, which has been a part of the Y's family since 1927, was not an easy one.

"It was a really tough decision. We've been operating a camp in Lake Wenatchee for so many decades and have survived several other times when we talked about moving on from the property. But as fiduciaries we also know that our mission comes with program and people, so with that in mind, if we can sell the camp and get out from under the two-million-dollar burden of operating a space like that every year, we could improve and actually expand our opportunities to provide outdoor education for a greater number of kids in the region."

With the proceeds from the sale of its Lake Wenatchee Camp, the Y intends to create an endowment designed to provide local residents with access to a wide variety of outdoor recreation experiences and programs, including traditional overnight camping and summer camps for kids at different locations.

The Y's endowment, once created, will also allow for the development of adventure-based programs in natural settings with hands-on learning opportunities, outdoor education, and leadership development.

Foster says the Y is also working to ensure a smooth transition for the Lake Wenatchee Camp's staff and volunteers, many of whom are likely to be involved in the non-profit's new programs.

As for this summer, Foster says it will be the last one for campers at the 25-acre Lake Wenatchee site.

"We're going through the appraisal process now and getting guidance from our third-party partners, but I don't want any brokers or realtors on the campus until after the summer season is over, so it probably won't be until September that it gets listed on the market. Meanwhile, we've still got all of our contracts in place with vendors until the end of June and then the kids will arrive in July, and some of our camp staff actually started working today to get ready for this summer because we have other groups who come in to use the camp. I anticipate this will be an amazing summer at Lake Wenatchee, even though it, in all likelihood, will be our last one there."

The sale of the Lake Wenatchee Camp is also expected to assist with the funding of construction or long-term debt service for the Y's new main campus at the corner of 5th Street and Wenatchee Avenue, but Foster says she won't be able to confirm this until the sale is final and the funds are in hand.