[00:00:00] Fuzz Martin: Friends, neighbors, Washington Countians, thank you for listening to Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz, a podcast about the positive things happening in and around Washington County, Wisconsin. I thought I’d start off by giving you a quick update to start the show. I know at the end of season three, I talked about how I was going to run a 5k with my little sister.
She’s only three years younger than me, and I’m 45. You can do math. But she’s not a child, but I still call her my little sister because that’s what big brothers do. Anyway, you’ll be happy to know that we both survived the Cream Puff 5k. It was fun. We had a good time. I’ve since run three 5Ks on my own, not, uh, not sanctioned 5Ks, but just, you know, running with my Apple watch and I’m enjoying it.
It’s fun. So, there we go. This power lifter is still running, which means this world is really messed up. Uh, speaking of fitness, that’s the topic of this week’s episode. Well, specifically development related to fitness. But you probably knew that by the title of the episode, right? Rob Johnson of the Kettle Moraine YMCA joins me this week to talk about the renovations going on at the Y’s Washington street location.
It’s some really exciting stuff and it will be great for members of the Y and members of the community. And with that, here are 15 minutes on the Kettle Moraine YMCA renovations with CEO Rob Johnson. On Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
Rob, thank you for joining me today. I want to dive into some of the exciting renovations that you have going on at the Kettle Moraine YMCA, but before we can get into what’s changing, can you first share with our listeners a bit about what the Kettle Moraine YMCA is? Because you have a lot. You have a lot going on.
Three locations, right? And you have a lot of programming and a lot of things that you guys offer.
[00:01:53] Rob Johnson: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to be here today. The Kettle Moraine YMCA was actually founded back in 1969, so we’re actually celebrating 55 years this year, which is pretty cool. And, in 2014, we actually purchased the Feith family Ozaukee YMCA over in, Saukville, and we’re celebrating 25 years as a branch there, 10 years under ownership of the Kettle Moraine YMCA, which is also exciting.
So like you said, we serve two counties, we serve almost all the school districts in both counties. So really school age and day camp are huge programs for us. Literally today, we probably have about 1, 100 kids in summer day camp at four locations throughout Washington and Ozaukee County.
Additionally, we do a lot of early childhood development programming. So what we consider that would be six weeks of age infant until about five years of age. And today, literally, we probably have 275 children in care today too. Again, multiple locations through both counties. Those are kind of the daycare, childcare side of things, and then we have all the traditional stuff like the youth sports, you know, the soccer, the t ball, the flag football, those types of programs.
Swimming lessons is still absolutely huge, very important. Water safety is huge for us. Even during the summer months, a lot of the families, you know, they go outdoors, they go to Ragnar Park, beautiful venue. They go over to Lake Michigan, but really that safety around water is a key component for us and a lot of people take those swimming lessons.
We had an amazing program come forward this last year from Delta Defense. They actually helped us to sponsor our swimming lesson program for 10 for any child entering third grade in the West Bend School District. Just tremendous support because they understand safety is such a key component for that.
And then the other big flagship I would just like to mention is our chronic disease programming is still very Successful. We do our Livestrong. It’s a cancer survivorship program. And we also do a diabetes prevention program. United Way helps us with that. So basically, these programs are free to the community.
So anyone who’s, either went through some type of cancer treatment is currently in treatment or is a recovering. Cancer patient, they certainly can come and participate in that program. If someone is not diagnosed as a diabetic, they can participate in our Diabetes Prevention Program, which again, we’ve had tremendous results for people that go through this year long program.
It does include a free membership. So you just have to contact the Y to take part, to participate in any of these programs.
[00:04:20] Fuzz Martin: Well, yeah, and that’s, and that’s just kind of scratching the surface of all that. I have two daughters and they’re ten years apart and both of them learned how to swim at the Kettle Moraine YMCA.
And, you know, I just took my youngest daughter, who’s now nine, and we were swimming at a pool in Dodge County this weekend. She’s like, I’m a level four swimmer now. You know, so she’s Still in lessons, to, you know, this, to this day. But yeah, it’s, uh, an amazing set of programs that you have for kids, for, even for seniors and adults.
So, if you’ve been At the Y on West Washington Street in West Bend over the last six months, you’ve seen there’s construction going on. Rob, what is being built there? What is going on at the Y?
[00:05:03] Rob Johnson: Yeah, so that is our flagship, right? It was founded back in 1969, 55 years. Just actually kind of turned out luckily that it was an anniversary year that we were able to do this big project.
But, I’m just going to rewind like a year. So we have an amazing board of directors. We have 30 board of directors, volunteers from Washington and Ozaukee County, and they’re the leaders in the community. And they sat down and they said, we need to figure out, our financial stability long term because obviously COVID really killed the Y.
It, it hurt us tremendously. Our membership is just back to where it was in 2019, this year. So we, we’ve really been trying to figure out what our long term strategy is. And one of our board members said, you know, we need the modernization of the YMCA. And we have an amazing facility. You know, we put the family adventure pool back onto the facility in 2010, which really boosted us.
Then you go into COVID and everything. So they said, let’s figure it out. So. We went through a lot of surveys with our members, with community members, and then we actually found a company, and we brought them in and they actually put, sensors on all of our equipment, all of the spaces so that we really understood the usage of our facility.
And again, that’s just people who are using us at that time. Mm-Hmm. , right? But it was super eye-opening. And the biggest trend that’s occurring right now is strength training. Mm-Hmm. , right? You see a lot of things on the internet and stuff like that. You know, controlling your eating and strength training is really the way to lose weight.
And, obviously when everyone’s really getting health conscious, during COVID, a lot of people found a way to do their cardio activity, either at home or walking, you know, walking the dog, doing different things outdoors. But the strength training component is just something that people don’t have that accessibility to.
So, our board, said we’re going to move forward, with the capital campaign. And, we went out, we’ve raised, 1. 5 million dollars. Huge kudos to the donors, right? You know how philanthropic this entire community is, but, they really invested in the Y. And, we had a unique situation where in 2017, we actually converted two of our racquetball courts.
We had, we had five of them. We converted two of them to two floors. So, the lower level was small group training. Our Alloy program, and then second level was for group exercise. And we actually did that because we brought our 4K program for the West Bend School District in house here. And, so we still are able to provide that program.
But then when we were talking about it, we said, we have three other racquetball courts. I literally looked up how many people use the racquetball courts. Those three courts in the last year, there was nine people.
[00:07:33] Fuzz Martin: Oh, wow.
[00:07:34] Rob Johnson: Okay. And, and racquetball is tremendously popular, right? I mean, in the seventies, eighties, it was crazy.
Like people want it. We had five, right? I mean, imagine that 55 years, or we actually built the building in 78, but you know, so 45 years ago, it was super popular. And, now it’s just unused space. The cool thing is my volunteers, I just keep giving them kudos. is they said, well, that’s great. Let’s convert them.
But why wouldn’t you put a second floor on like you did with the other two? And I’m like, well, it’s going to cost 500, 000 more to do that. I so appreciate their advice because we said we’re going to expand the capital campaign to two levels. So basically what we did is we took the final three racquetball courts.
We took out, the walls in between them and a huge opportunity to increase the space. And then we put a second floor in there. So. Basically, we are going to be able to have a new wellness center, free weight specific center on the lower level. It’s going to be 5, 600 square feet. Our current free weight center is 2, 600 square feet.
So more than double. It’s going to be tremendous. You know, right now our equipment is maybe two feet apart from each other. There’s just no room. If you’re in there, I mean, I literally lift almost every day. And when I’m in there and I’m lifting, you can see the, the weight’s coming right by your head and you’re like, it’s a little tight in here.
So now we’re going to be able to have three to four feet in between each piece of equipment. And, and it’s, we’re really, really close to being done. So I’ve seen it and it is absolutely amazing. It is literally going to be the best weight center, probably in Southeastern Wisconsin, for sure in Washington County.
So super excited. So, the biggest thing I just want to make sure I highlight is that we put in a rack system. We So the cool thing about this is this is very intimidating, right? This is the heavy weightlifters that typically use this type of equipment, but we can have 12 users at one time and it has four platforms.
So if you ever go into a gym and you see the platforms where they have the bumper plates, where these guys are doing deadlifts and, you know, really serious weightlifting, we’re going to have four of those in one area there. Additionally, we actually doubled the number of dumbbells that we’re going to have in the space.
Which is awesome because you always have people who are waiting to get one. And I can tell you we actually have dumbbells up to one hundred and twenty five pounds. No, I cannot lift one hundred and twenty five pound off by myself. Right. I’m not Just keep going everyday, Rob, you’ll get there. Yeah. I’m at the end of my strength training days so I’m not going to be there.
But the other thing that we have. This is super exciting. Is we actually have eight stack cable crossover machines. But the coolest thing is technology has come so far. Bye bye. So with these cable crossovers, they actually have so many functions, and the best thing is now they actually have a baseball bat attachment, a golf club attachment, so you can literally go in there, you can put the golf club attachment on there, you can adjust where cable crossover machine is, and you can practice your swing, right?
This is literally how you focus on your strength and endurance for any of those sports.
[00:10:37] Fuzz Martin: Do you have a pickleball attachment?
[00:10:39] Rob Johnson: I’m gonna get to, I’m gonna get to pickleball, because I’m just talking about the first floor, right?
[00:10:42] Fuzz Martin: Oh, I just meant an attachment for pickleball, because, you know, that’s, that’s becoming very popular, and I know that you, you do have a, A pickleball piece of this coming up, but I’ve seen the renderings for the, the weight center.
I haven’t had a chance to, to see it like you have behind the curtain yet, but, my daughter, my oldest daughter is an Olympic weightlifter. She’s on the lacrosse Olympic weightlifting team, so we’re, Very excited about the platforms and, she was a power lifter before that and I was too, but also at 45, I’m not power lifting anymore because I have joints and not, not great joints anymore.
And I want to keep them until I’m at least in, at least in my sixties. But I’m so looking forward to being able to go and Get on a bench, when I want to get on a bench, or get on a squat rack when I want to get on a squat rack, and not have to wait a few minutes, and it’s not so bad, at any given time, and people are always great at the Y, but now having double the space, I’m really looking forward to it.
[00:11:36] Rob Johnson: Yeah, you’re not going to have to wait anymore, so there’s going to be multiple pieces. Until people hear about it, and then they’re like, we’re going to the Y. Yeah. That’ll be great for you guys. Yeah, for sure. Looking forward to it. Here’s the best thing, right? So, the big news is, is that our board approved for us to go 24 7.
Oh really? Oh wow, okay. So we’re in the process of pulling the wires. Yep. I don’t want to promise that it’ll happen before the first of the year. Our goal is truly by January 1 to be 24 7. Wow. So we have a lot of other facilities locally that have that ability, but the big thing with the YMCA is we, it’s such a big, it’s a hundred thousand square foot facility.
So we have so many staircases and stuff and we have to be able to see every inch. Yep. The cool thing is we actually did it over at River Shores a few years ago, And that’s a smaller 20, 000 square foot facility, and then we did it at our fifth location in Ozaukee County, and we’ve had no issues. I shouldn’t say we haven’t had any issues.
We’ve had issues. The cool thing is, we know every person who walks into the building, right? If anyone violates any of our rules or anything like that, we contact them, shut off their key fob. They have to contact us. We talk them through. Hey, come on in. You know, Fuzz, why did you let your daughter in, right?
Your daughter has to scan in herself so that we know both of you are in the facility, right? And then any behaviors that are unacceptable in the facility, they’re going to be shut off and obviously Most of those people we just turn them back on the next day. No issue. Sure. Yep but for us to be able to do it in here, we’re actually going to have 60, I think just over 60 cameras And they’re 360 degree cameras, right?
But we’re going to be able to see every inch of the facility You But literally, on Saturdays, when we close at four o’clock, you can come in at four o’clock, 415, you can play pickleball, you can lift weights, you can do 90 percent of the things, even in the gyms. Obviously, the pools are not going to be open because we lifeguard our pools at all times.
But our locker rooms are going to be available. You can go in, you can shower, you can have full facility access 24 7. And the holidays, right? Everyone says, oh, I’m not going to work out on July 4th. Yeah, you are. Yeah, that’s awesome. If you’re a regular exerciser, you’re going to come in on those holidays.
Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And again, the only thing that wouldn’t be available would be the pool.
[00:13:36] Fuzz Martin: Yeah, and then, you know, one of the things with River Shores is 24 hours, but because it is in a residential facility, some of the waits are not accessible because of the banging of the waits during the evening hours and things like that.
You have to be respectful of the, of the residents. So, this gives you the opportunity to use the free weights and such at all times. At all times, awesome. That’ll be cool. Wow,
[00:13:58] Rob Johnson: that’s awesome. So, the second level, that’s even probably more exciting. So, like I said, the two courts we originally did, that was group exercise.
We had to do that really quick. We actually did it in a month when we converted it, about seven years ago. So we actually took time this time to make sure that we completed the flooring so there’s no sound transfer between two levels. And we put in a brand new, it’s a rubberized flooring, it’s exceptional.
Added some windows and some mirrors to the one side. But then the second side, again, this is probably about 3, 000 square foot, the other side. Cut out windows, put two bathrooms in there. have a huge area for group exercise and an additional pickleball court. So that’s going to be something that people can rent out and reserve it so that they can go up there, they can play pickleball with their families and stuff like that.
And it’ll be overflow because our two gymnasiums right now, we have five pickleball courts, okay? And they’re packed, right? But pickleball. They don’t have an opportunity to hop into a highly competitive pickleball program. So they’re going to be able to go upstairs. Maybe learn the game a little bit more, learn the game, or learn the rules, the fundamentals, start to get a little bit stronger, and then they can come down, they can participate, and each of the gyms will be kind of designated by level.
So, um, there’s a great opportunity. And that’s really through a lot of people who participate in that are through our third party payers, which we call like Artivity Health, Optum, their Medicare supplement program. So anyone who’s 65 is on a Medicare program, all they have to do is say, do I have gym access for this?
And if they do, they get a free membership to the Y. I get reimbursed if Fuzz comes in. And, obviously we want you to come in as much as you can because we get reimbursed, the more you attend the facility. Great.
[00:15:42] Fuzz Martin: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. So this is all phase one, right? Mm hmm. So you still have two more phases left to go.
The reason that I reached out to you is because we all got an email from members that You have your grand opening of your free weight center, which is coming up on July 29th. So that’ll be open for everybody starting the 29th?
[00:16:01] Rob Johnson: Ten o’clock, yep. So we’re doing a ribbon cutting with the West Bend Chamber.
Okay. Great always to come and do that. So we’re going to do that at nine o’clock. Ten o’clock it’s going to be open for, the community to basically come in there, try it out, and our members I’m sure will be chomping at the bit to get in there and do it. But like you said, Literally the next day, that’s when phase two starts.
And phase two is actually, I think it’s probably going to be just about as impressive because we have a huge wellness center that we did in 2004 and it’s a, it’s cardio heavy, right? And we knew that we’ve been losing people for cardio exercise. And again, not group exercise. This is just specifically happened on a treadmill or elliptical or a bike.
And, what we’re going to do is we’re actually going to renovate that entire space. We’re going to take out a half wall. We’re going to move around some of the selectorized equipment so that in a separate space within the same room, but then the best thing is we’re really creating what we call a beginning exerciser space.
So this is again, be going to be heavy on strength training, but no dumbbells over 50 pounds, right? But all new machines, I failed to mention that, everything is new. Brand new equipment throughout the facility. And you’re donating the old equipment, right? Yeah, so, yep, we’ve worked with the police and fire here in West Bend forever.
And we always, so I think they probably would like us to be a little more aggressive and update our equipment more than we do. But, yeah, so they’re super excited. They’re gonna come in, the firefighters are always great. They come in with a group of guys and lift out the equipment that they’re going to take and then they have a space at the fire department right here off of Main Street, 33.
And then, the police department also has a workout facility. And this is great. A lot of them are members of the Y as well, but when they’re working or they have to, you know, do some of their physical training, they can do it right on site. So that really helps them out. Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So phase two, we’re going to get, that’s going to be a long process as well, probably a couple months.
And new carpeting, new paint, all that stuff, new equipment, heavy strength training. We’re still going to have the treadmills, the ellipticals, but here’s the really funny thing, Fuzz, is we went through here, we had the equipment assessed as far as what the usage would be. And I would have told you that the third treadmill in the back row, I always swear that I see someone on it, right?
We go through the stats and they’re like, yeah, nine o’clock on Monday morning and Wednesday morning that machine’s used, and the rest of the week it’s never used. The stats are just unbelievable of what you can find out about usage. So now we know which machines to move around. We can see mileage on equipment too, so we always shift equipment around too because if one’s getting used more, we want to obviously balance that out.
But so we are going to take some equipment out. Truthfully, probably seven, eight pieces of equipment. Equipment are gonna go bye-Bye. Oh wow. Okay. But we’re gonna replace it with strength equipment again. Beginner exercise stuff. Mm-Hmm. . We have a lot of our heavy free weight people that like to come.
They use our free weight center. It’s very busy. They come down and they do some of that in our wellness center, and now they’re gonna have everything in the free weight center. The Wellness Center is now really going to be, again, kind of that beginning exerciser. Mm hmm. And I, I am one of those beginning exercisers.
[00:19:04] Fuzz Martin: My wife and I, on, on Thursdays when my daughter has swim lessons, we always have a walking date on, on your treadmills. So that’s when we actually have a half hour to catch up on our lives, because, the young one’s taking swim lessons. So we go and catch up on, I think treadmill three and four is, where we typically walk.
Uh, that’s funny. There you go. Uh, and then after that you’ve got Phase three, which is also exciting because that’s the professional training center, right?
[00:19:31] Rob Johnson: It is. So one of the things when we started the process of fundraising, one of our donors said, how come you guys don’t do more around youth performance?
And I’m like, we were really big into it, but really everything comes down to your staff team. We have an amazing staff team at the Y. We have about 590 employees. 100 of them are full time, the rest are part time. And the challenge is, during COVID, we lost a lot of those great employees, right? I’m the first one to admit it.
And so what we’re doing, we actually just hired someone. So we’re very excited for someone to focus on the youth performance area. And we have about six other, personal trainers that have stepped forward and said, Hey, I want to do that. So we’ve worked with high school teams in the past, all of the local school districts, you know, everything from snowboarding to volleyball to football to track at every school district.
We’ve worked with them in the past. We’re just going to pull them back inside. So this last space is really our current free weight center. So it’s 2, 500 square foot, really nice space, but really what it’s going to become is functional training, right? They’re going to be able to come in there. We’re going to be able to focus on them.
We’re going to be able to do small groups, large groups, and you know, probably up to 25, 30 people at a time if we have to for a big group. But then we’re going to do a lot of small group training in that space, too. So, again, that’s phase three. We hope everything’s done by January 1 because 24 7 comes.
Those spaces are available to all our members, too, then, right? It’s not exclusive to small group training. They can come in. What we want to do is we want to teach people how to do it safely on their own.
[00:21:02] Fuzz Martin: Sure.
And then I’ll have like turf and stuff like that there, right? Yeah. Cool. Yeah, totally. Yeah. Well, these are all extremely exciting.
I mean, not just as a member, but just from a community perspective, because it does. Give our student athletes an opportunity to train on things that they might not get at their schools, that might have an opportunity to improve, and then just from, you know, again from, access to the weights 24 7. If you’re working late, or you know, it’s Saturday, and you worked in the yard all day, and you need to go and, and you want to go lift weights after, I guess, mowing the lawn, you can go do that now.
I think that’s, that’s awesome. So, congrats on, Well, one, fundraising to get this all done, because I know these capital campaigns can be a lot to get over the hump, but we’ve got a great community that does step forward when it’s time to do so, and kudos to you for getting it done. Thank you.
[00:21:51] Rob Johnson: Well, like I said, volunteers are the key, right?
That’s the key to the magic at the Y, and I’m very blessed to have wonderful leadership. That really helps and the cool thing is we’re now starting our strategic plan for the next three years. So, got this done, we’re pretty close to done, and now we’re going to figure out what are the next three years and what our priority is going to be.
[00:22:09] Fuzz Martin: Excellent. If someone wants to become a member of the Ketamarane YMCA, what’s the best way to get started?
[00:22:14] Rob Johnson: Yeah, the best way, you can certainly, everyone can do things online right now. So you can go to www. ketamarane. com. K M Y M C A dot org, I’m sorry. And, you can go online, find our website, you can actually register as a member on there, or you can come into our facility.
The one thing we didn’t talk about is that you’ll get a key fob. The key fob’s good at all three locations, right? So that’s the best thing is you buy one key fob. 20 for a key fob, pretty nominal fee, and that’ll get you River Shores access and Fythe Family access today, and then once we go live here in West Bend, you’re actually going to have one key fob for all three locations, and you can sign up for a membership, Online or in person.
[00:22:54] Fuzz Martin: Great. Excellent. Rob, thank you for coming on the show. Appreciate it.
[00:22:58] Rob Johnson: Absolutely. Thanks for having me.
[00:23:02] Fuzz Martin: Thank you again to Kettle Moraine YMCA’s CEO, Rob Johnson, for joining me on this week’s episode of Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz. I’m very much looking forward to the new weight room opening up on July 29th. Hey, if you ever have an episode for the show, there are two very easy ways to get in touch with me, but one of them has changed.
So please listen closely. First, you can go to fuzz. cc slash guest and fill in the form that is f u z z. cc slash guest, or you can email me and this is what has changed. Email me fuzz at fuzzmartin. com. That is fuzz, F U Z Z, at fuzzmartin. com. New episodes coming on Tuesdays. Next week, I’m joined by Jim Healy, the village administrator in Richfield to talk about public safety.
So I’ll talk to you then, right here on Fifteen Minutes with Fuzz.
