YMCA, City Efforts Ensure Plenty of Places to Play
crown point, recreation, sports, ymca,
Indiana is widely known as basketball country, and Crown Point is no exception.
“Northwest Indiana has always been known for basketball,” says Ed Salata, associate executive director of the Southlake YMCA. The Southlake YMCA offers basketball players plenty of opportunities to enjoy the game, including a high school league for boys (girls coming soon) and a father/son summer league.
Providing quality activities for youth and families is big in Crown Point, Salata says, and the YMCA works to meet the demand. In addition to basketball, the Y offers volleyball, karate, aerobics and much more.
“We also have an open gym with weight training and swimming, indoor soccer, T-ball and youth flag football,” Salata says. “There are non-member rates for all programming; you don’t even have to join.”
But many people do join. Southlake YMCA has 8,000 monthly and annual members. Southlake opened its current 28,000-square-foot facility in 1997, moving from its original home, built in 1910.
“We needed a new place to handle the massive growth in Crown Point,” Salata says. “We opened up and quadrupled our membership. We filled up fast and even had a waiting list.”
Residents have other choices for recreation here, including youth and adult sports leagues (football, basketball, soccer, softball, baseball, tennis, swimming), community classes (karate, Pilates and a walking club), a deep river water park a few miles away, 11 parks in Lake County, summer camps and trails for hiking and biking.
In fact, that last amenity is scheduled for some major upgrades. Crown Point recently adopted a short- and long-term bicycle program with various efforts in the works to encourage more cycling. Trails will be connected, bike racks installed downtown, and roadways marked to allow cyclists greater access.
“As far as the city is concerned, we’re working to develop good non-motorized transportation for the residents,” says Julie Johnson, Crown Point director of parks and recreation.
This will include working with developers, “retro-fitting” existing streets due for repaving and marking bike lanes.
Crown Point is also a hub for four regional off-road multi-use trails (biking, horseback riding, walking and rollerblading) that come into the city, Johnson says. The bike program will give people who use those trails better access to Crown Point – a plus for any town.
“There are multiple reasons the community moved forward on this, including health and wellness, preventing pollution and connecting the trails,” Johnson says.
“We’re going to put these ideas into the budget and into the planning processes so we’re moving forward,” Johnson says. “We’re already starting to purchase and install bike racks.”
Story by Paul Hughes
Photo by Wes Aldridge
