Crosby Wellness, YMCA sever longtime partnership

Since 1999, the Crosby Wellness Center has operated alongside the YMCA, but that is no longer the case.

After 18 years of partnership, the Winter Park Health Foundation, which runs the wellness center, and the Y have gone their separate ways after failing to reach a consensus on where they want to take the wellness center in the future.

The split surprised many at the WPHF, including Debbie Watson, the executive vice president of the foundation.

“We had been working famously together, and everything was going great, and frankly we were surprised that when we reached the point of putting together our memorandum of agreement, that there were several items that the Y did not want to pursue,” Watson said. “So it was unfortunate that we were not able to continue our collaboration.”

One of the biggest issues was that the WPHF was looking to attain a medical-fitness certification for the first time since its founding in 1989, but the Y was uninterested, Watson said.

At the moment, Watson is not sure if the WPHF will take on the role of managing the wellness center as a whole, which it did previously. Other possible options include partnering with Florida Hospital, which is partnering in the overall operations at the Center for Health & Wellbeing, or hiring an independent operator.

Watson said the WPHF is planning to have an operator for the facility setup within the next 60 to 90 days. Everything else, such as design and programs, all will remain as planned.

Until recently, the Y had played a collaborative role in helping to get the Peggy & Philip B. Crosby Wellness Center out of its old 30,000-square-foot facility and into the new 80,000-square-foot Center for Health & Wellbeing facility currently under construction on the same plot of land.

The original wellness center facility was closed in December 2016. The new building will open in 2018.

“The new wellness center will be surrounded by a variety of other programs, services, wellness/fitness/medicine clinical programs within the new facility,” Watson said. 

A big concern for many members of the center before it was torn down has been possible pricing increases. Because the Y is no longer a partner, the prospect of a hospital helping run things could lead to a spike in costs.

However, Watson emphasized that not only will membership prices not exceed what they were before the facility closed, but also she hopes to reduce the price — which also will cover every type of program at the Center for Health & Wellbeing.

“The only thing that has a fee associated with it is membership for the Crosby Wellness Center,” Watson said. “All of the other programs and services within the Center for Health & Wellbeing — whether it be the educational programs that’ll take place in the conference center or the cooking classes in the nutrition theater — all of those things are going to be open to the public.” 

Watson also said there could possibly be minimal costs for programs that require extra expenses — such as hosting an expert from across the country.

Watson also said the WPHF hopes to be able to offer more than one membership option.

“We also plan on offering packages — different types of memberships where as in the past it was kind of a one size fits all membership,” Watson said. “One of the things that we want to take a serious look at is what can we do to offer different types of memberships, and we are going to work on that over the next few months. We expect by the beginning of 2018, we’ll have a handle on membership prices.”