YMCA returning to downtown KC as crews begin converting historic Lyric Theater
A $35 million renovation of the shuttered Lyric Theater will soon deliver downtown Kansas City its first full-service YMCA location in more than three decades.
Leaders from the YMCA, city of Kansas City and civic groups celebrated the project with a ceremonial groundbreaking Friday morning.
Crews will restore parts of the historic theater in the Library District of downtown and convert it into the Downtown YMCA and Kirk Family Community Center. The project is expected to wrap up in late 2020 or early 2021.
David Byrd, president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Kansas City, said the dream of opening a downtown YMCA is providing a space for the community.
“That’s what this work will be about — not a fitness center, not a health club — a place for those to gather, a place for people to come together in the downtown community,” Byrd said.
YMCA has a smaller location in the Quality Hill area of downtown, but the new facility is the first full-service YMCA in downtown since the 1980s. It will have a health clinic through partnership with Truman Medical Centers, two pools, a gym, group workout rooms, a track, a teaching kitchen and community rooms.
The lobby of the historic theater — built in 1926 — will be fully restored along with the entry ways on each floor. The rest of the building will be converted to give the community center a modern look.
Byrd said it was important to restore such an important Kansas City landmark. The Lyric Theater had been largely unused since the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts opened in the Crossroads Arts District in 2011.
“The community really got behind the interests of retaining this building that’s been here since 1926 — the nostalgia of it and really taking the building and re-purposing it,” Byrd said.
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Kansas City Mayor Sly James said officials were celebrating more than just a community center.
“Any time that you have a building, a location, a venue where people come together — people of different stripes, different colors, different ages, different walks of life — in one place, then we all have a chance to get to know each other better,” James said. “And in getting to know each other better we have a chance to alleviate and eliminate some of the things that divide us.”
James said bringing people together has helped downtown Kansas City succeed.
Bringing the YMCA back to downtown was a “five-year labor of love,” said Mark Hulet, a senior vice president for the YMCA of Greater Kansas City. Hulet said the organization received $12 million in private donations, $17 million in tax-increment financing and $8 million in tax credits from the state of Missouri.