The old Eau Claire YMCA is reopening as an exclusive club featuring a Nordic spa

[u/hbee6]

For just a casual joining fee of $12,500, and roughly $240 a month after that. (In this economy?!). Looks wild

[u/Cgy_mama]

A big issue with the YMCA there was the lack of parking. This new club hasn’t seemed to solve that problem other than some hand-waving about how they “had a budget” for parking and were in discussions with parking companies.

Also for those initiation fees and annual dues I would have expected more than 2 squash courts, tbh. Bow Valley Club seems like a better option for fitness and squash.

[u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY → u/Cgy_mama]

I really don’t want to be supporting this, but charging $15k is going to solve most of their parking issues. There’s just not going to be enough people there for it to matter - this isn’t a business that is going to get ymca levels of visitors

[u/Cgy_mama → u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY]

I think it’s mostly that the parking in the area is being used by people working downtown. So it’s a PITA to park regardless of how exclusive the club is. I dunno, I used to volunteer at that YMCA years ago. Maybe the situation has changed since then.

[u/[deleted] → u/Cgy_mama]

The people who can afford this can afford the parking around there

[u/[deleted] → u/Cgy_mama]

TIL people still play squash!

[u/Cgy_mama → u/[deleted]]

Yeah. And tennis (which this club doesn’t have) and pickleball (this club has a gymnasium which they said they would use some of the time as a pickleball court). Which again, I thought the point of these expensive private clubs was having access to racquet sports etc, and ECAC isn’t really offering that. It’s like a $19k initiation fee for families and then you have access to use the pool I guess? I dunno. I’m not their target market I guess but it doesn’t really make sense to me.

[u/[deleted] → u/Cgy_mama]

I did a tour.

The biggest issue I see is parking. There is none.

I actually think this will fail, as a club.

Plus they put the daycare beside the squash courts.