YWCA Minneapolis sells downtown fitness facility to Minnetonka nonprofit

Downtown Minneapolis’ longstanding YWCA building on Nicollet Mall is about to get a new owner.

St. David’s Center for Child and Family Development, a Minnetonka-based nonprofit that provides mental health and autism services to children, announced Saturday that it’s buying the 120,000-square-foot building.

The sale comes more than six months after the YWCA shocked the community with the news that it was closing its Uptown and downtown fitness centers and pools. The YWCA has existed on Nicollet Mall for nearly a century.

St. David’s Center, which works with 5,000 children a year in its preschool, mental health and autism services, plans to expand its programs to serve an additional 1,500 kids a year in the new building, helping it meet the rising demand for mental health help, leaders said.

“Families are struggling and children are struggling more than they ever had,” said Julie Sjordal, CEO of St. David’s. “We have to increase capacity in order to meet community need.”

The YWCA closed its downtown and Uptown buildings on Nov. 1. Some members urged the city, park district or county to buy the buildings to keep them open to the public, but city and Park Board leaders said they couldn’t afford to do so.

YWCA CEO Shelley Carthen Watson said in a statement that the nonprofit received three offers for the downtown building, including from private developers and other nonprofits, but the organization prioritized a deal that would keep its early childhood center open on site, which St. David’s will do. She declined to disclose any details on the potential sale of the Uptown facility, which is in the high-profile Hennepin Avenue corridor near W. Lake Street.

St. David’s and the YWCA signed a purchase agreement for the downtown building in February and hope to close the sale by summer, pending approvals from the state and Hennepin County due to previous bonding funding.

The two nonprofits declined to reveal the price of the one-acre site and building; property values aren’t listed in county records because the YWCA is tax-exempt.

The corner of Nicollet Mall has housed YWCA programs since 1929, though the current building dates to 1976 and was remodeled in 2016. The 80,000-square-foot YWCA Uptown opened in 1987.

As a result of the closures, the YWCA, which still operates a building in Midtown, laid off 45 employees — about 13% of its workforce. Like other nonprofits struggling financially after the COVID-19 pandemic, YWCA leaders said they faced membership declines, staffing shortages and rising expenses. The organization decided to move away from health and fitness to focus on child care, racial equity and youth programs.

The building closures also sent about 300 swimmers in the YWCA’s Otters and Masters swim teams scrambling to find new swimming clubs at pools including South High School and Southwest High School.

For St. David’s, the new building will be the largest site it has owned in its six decades. The nonprofit, which started in 1961 as a preschool at St. David’s Episcopal Church, has grown to one of the largest child mental health providers in Minnesota.

Sjordal said the organization started looking a year ago for a new building as mental health crises spiked during the pandemic. St. David’s also leases space from Westminster Presbyterian Church downtown and owns a 65,000-square-foot former school building in Minnetonka.

Both buildings are full, Sjordal said, and there are 1,800 children on a waiting list for programs, with some kids waiting six months to more than a year.

“In the last several years, we have just seen a growing need across the community for children’s mental health, for autism treatment, for pediatric therapies,” Sjordal said. “We’re out of space.”

St. David’s will seek tax credits for the project, Sjordal said, while embarking on its largest capital campaign ever to drum up an estimated $9 million to renovate the YWCA facility, which also has 28 parking spots and a rooftop patio.

Most of the fitness areas will be converted into classrooms or treatment spaces and St. David’s may keep the pool to start aqua therapy, Sjordal said. St. David’s will lease about 20% of the building back to the YWCA to continue to operate its early childhood center.

Some of St. David’s programs will launch there later this year, but the building won’t be fully used until 2026 after a renovation starts next year, Sjordal said. She added that St. David’s plans to go to the Legislature next year with a state funding request while working to draw donations and grants.

St. David’s is still recovering from the pandemic, which caused its programs to shut down in early 2020. With program fees and medical assistance bringing in most of its revenue, St. David’s had to furlough about 200 employees. Now, the organization has about 520 employees and is still rebuilding to return to 2019 staffing levels, she said. St. David’s has increased pay, Sjordal added, to attract and retain employees as many nonprofits struggle with turnover.

The new downtown building will have 150 employees, including existing staff and new hires. The nonprofit, which had about a $27 million annual budget in 2023, has hired fundraisers and boosted efforts to obtain more grants as it moves into a new chapter with its expansion downtown.

“It’s a big change [for the YWCA building],” Sjordal said. “And yet I think the legacy will live on through the kind of work that will happen in that building.”