Norris optimistic on McIntire YMCA

Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris said Saturday that the YMCA and softball fields at McIntire Park can “co-exist.”

Norris rejected a provision in the city’s master plan which would reconfigure the softball fields at McIntire Park into rectangular fields for football, soccer and other sports, and he emphasized that plans to build a YMCA at the park would have no effect on the two existing softball fields.

Norris on Saturday unveiled a proposal that would bring together leaders from Charlottesville, Albemarle County, the University of Virginia and local recreational organizations to increase the amount of space for athletics and determine the best way to configure fields.

“We have to find ways to expand the pie, not just fight over narrow slices of the pie,” Norris said.

A 2005 assessment done by the city showed that it needed nine rectangular fields, seven of which required lighting. Softball is one of the most popular sports in the area — with roughly 2,400 players and 160 adult teams — but only 20 percent of players originate in the city.

The city decided to turn the softball fields at McIntire Park into rectangular fields, though the plan came with much resistance.

Chris Carwile, who uses the McIntire fields once or twice a week as a member of a softball team, said that he suspects the city didn’t realize how angry some residents would get after finding out that the softball fields would be replaced.

“I think they found out that a lot of people actually did care,” Carwile said, adding that the anger had nothing with plans to build the YMCA at the park. “The problem was with the rectangular fields.”

“I think the Y, overall, has kind of gotten a bad wrap,” said Jessica Packer, who runs the Piedmont Family YMCA’s youth programs.

Denny Blank, CEO of the local YMCA, said the nonprofit never called for plans to destroy the softball fields.

Blank said that the YMCA would be an asset to the community and improve the park. The second level of the building would replace a picnic pavilion and the bottom level would have a pool and be built along a hillside.

Blank said the land where the YMCA would be built is practically unusable as it is, and the pavilion would be relocated. He said that the nonprofit wants to be at a site where other athletics events are occurring, because the YMCA can utilize the park and residents attending softball games and other sporting events could use the YMCA.

“It’s absurd to think we’d want to be here without other things going on,” Blank said.

Norris said that there’s a shortage of athletics fields in the area and that’s why local community leaders have to rally together to find more field space.

In the meantime, it would be unfair to take away softball fields at McIntire from local residents who’ve have been using those fields for decades, he said.

The YMCA had originally planned to build a 75,000 square foot building at McIntire Park in coming years, though the blueprint was recently updated to include only about a 50,000-square-foot athletics and aquatics center that could be expanded should the organization raise more money.