The Duneland School Corp. has a partnership with the Duneland YMCA for the future use of the Chesterton Middle School building. Times of Northwest Indiana fie photo
CHESTERTON — The new Duneland YMCA and Duneland School Corp. collaboration at the Chesterton Middle School building is drawing wide notice.
The project continues to jell, with preliminary design work beginning soon.
“As we predicted, this is going to get national attention before we even put a shovel in the ground,” YMCA Executive Director Dave Kasarda told the School Board Monday night.
Already, the YMCA is getting calls from counterparts across the nation asking how the partnership with the schools came together and how it’s working, he said.
Leadership for various groups involved in bringing the plan to fruition is falling into place, Kasarda said. About 80 individuals, not counting board members, are waiting to be involved, he said. Kasarda is looking for school involvement in the groups as well.
“We’re making a lot of headway,” Kasarda said.
Wess Audsley, principal at Allied Advisors Group, is working with the agencies involved to see what the space needs for the healthy living campus will be. That includes finding out what the programming ideas are and which programs should be located near which.
With all that information, Audsley hopes to have a conceptual design done by the end of the year.
The first quarter of next year, it will be time to look harder at funding. Some will be philanthropic, some from government sources some from other sources.
“We have to understand how this thing is going to work, the size and shape of it,” Audsley said. A preliminary design, more firm than the conceptual design but not yet the final design, could emerge in the first quarter of 2023 as well.
“It’s going to be a co-created effort, and we’re all excited about what the opportunity has to offer,” he said.
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