YMCA plus park, library and St. Luke’s equals a Meridian collaboration called The Hill

The YMCA, St. Luke’s Health System, Meridian Parks & Recreation, West Ada School District and Meridian Library will unveil a grand collaboration May 25 at what is being called The Hill on Meridian’s south side.

On that day, the South Meridian Family YMCA, Hillsdale Park, St. Luke’s Lifestyle Medicine center and a “tiny library” version of the Meridian Library will open off the new roundabout at Eagle and Amity roads.

The new, $18.5 million South Meridian Family YMCA is attached to Hillsdale Elementary School, which opened in September 2016.

The Treasure Valley Family YMCA, under which the Meridian facility falls, built two adjacent gyms. One of the gyms includes secure access from Hillsdale Elementary for dedicated school use during the school day and will be open for public use after the school day, said David Duro, president and CEO of the Treasure Valley Family YMCA.

St. Luke’s will use an 8,000-square-foot space within the YMCA for its new Lifestyle Medical program, which will encourage and teach healthy lifelong behavior. It wll share that space with the YMCA.

The new Hillsdale Park lawn runs up to the YMCA, and the park’s playground serves as the Hillsdale Elementary playground during the school day.

Eventually, the Meridian Library also wants a branch at The Hill but for now will have a “tiny children’s library” in a 300-square-foot shipping container just outside the YMCA main entrance. The tiny library is expected to open May 25 along with the YMCA, St. Luke’s and Hillsdale Park.

“It’s a model other communities can follow on how to leverage each other’s efforts to bring something to the community that can be more than the individual parts,” Meridian Mayor Tammy de Weerd said at the April 2017 groundbreaking for the YMCA.

The Hill started with 2014 land donations of 15 acres by married couple Marti Hill and Dixie Cook and by the Brighton Corp. The 10 acres of Hillsdale park comprise about 7.5 acres from Hill and Cook and 2.5 acres from Brighton. Brighton also donated the school property and is developing the housing due south of The Hill.

Hill and Cook considered donating their farmland for use as a park for about a decade. Their ranch house remains at the west edge of the park.

Brighton’s David Turnbull quickly got to talking to YMCA and school officials and The Hill collaboration emerged.

South Meridian Family YMCA

The 58,491-square-foot, two-level South Meridian Family YMCA will be Meridian’s Y as well as serving Kuna, which is 2 miles to the west. Southwest Boise is about 1 mile to the east.

Duro also mentioned the South Meridian Y is within a 12-minute drive of 19 elementary schools.

Meridian has not had its own YMCA building since the Treasure Valley Family YMCA sold the Meridian Homecourt YMCA facility to the city of Meridian in 2016 for $4 million. That money all went to the building of the South Meridian Y. Treasure Valley YMCA CEO David Duro announced on March 13 that fundraising had brought in pledges for the balance of the $18.5 million project to allow the new YMCA to open debt-free.

The Y’s athletic facilities (gyms and fitness rooms) will be on the lower level with the upper level dedicated to activity centers for different age groups. The St. Luke’s lifestyle medicine center occupies the upper level, and both levels have access to the outdoors.

The Y’s primary 7,000-square-foot gym fits a full-size basketball court lengthwise and two smaller courts across. Basketball courts and volleyball stanchions will all be lowered from walls or ceiling, South Meridian Y Executive Director Mike Kapuscinski said.

The primary gym has doors into the 4,335-square-foot smaller elementary school gym . The smaller gym will have one smaller basketball court and will open to the public after school lets out.

The three 2,350-square-foot , 1,682-square-foot and 1,225-square-foot fitness studios have glass garage doors that can be rolled up during warmer months. The Y also has a high-ceiling 5,300-square-foot cardio room accessible by stairs from the upper level main lobby.

Kapuscinski is especially enthused about the four-story play structure.

A future $9 million or $10 million indoor aquatic facility could follow in the next 12 to 18 months, attached to the Y building on the Hillsdale Park side.

“Idaho leads the nation in drownings per capita,” Duro said. “We know the cure. Teach kids to swim.”

St. Luke’s Lifestyle Medicine

St. Luke’s Lifestyle Medicine program, launched last fall, will reside in the 8,000-square-foot space St. Luke’s acquired for $4 million on the upper level of the South Meridian Family YMCA. The St. Luke’s investment also included paying its share of common space at the YMCA.

It will include a 2,000-square-foot instructional kitchen that can be partitioned into four smaller spaces. St. Luke’s will also have a supervised transitional gym for patients not yet comfortable with working out in the Y’s gyms.

Lifestyle Medicine’s focus is based on the World Health Organization’s statement that 80 percent of non-communicable disease revolves around how much people move, what we eat, avoiding alcohol and smoking, and sleep patterns, said Pat Lara, St. Luke’s administrator for heart and vascular.

“We are good at treating sick people but we’re not that good at keeping people from getting sick,” Lara said. “Lifestyle medicine is our first hard effort to help people from getting sick.”

Lara said the collaboration with the YMCA is ideal as the organization’s focus is family fitness. He said the Y excels at reaching out to families, while St. Luke’s expects people to “come to us.”

St. Luke’s brought on Dr. Jennifer Shalz to be director of its department of lifestyle medicine. Lara said St. Luke’s has performed lifestyle medicine on cardio and pulmonary rehabilitation patients for eight years.

St. Luke’s lifestyle medicine center at the South Meridian YMCA will work to make patients more fit in the weeks before surgeries and also improve lifestyles post-surgery. The center will also offer lifestyle education and counseling to women considering pregnancy, Lara said.

“We will tune you up before surgery,” he said.

Lifestyle Medicine will have an on-site full-time and half-time staff dedicated to diabetes education, diets, psychology and other subjects.

“Everybody knows they should exercise more and eat better,” Lara said. “How do we get people to change their health behavior?”

The St. Luke’s instructional kitchen includes audio-visual equipment enabling people to tune in live from St. Luke’s medical centers in  Boise, Nampa, Magic Valley, McCall and Ketchum.

“We overbuilt the audio-visual system,” Lara said. “It will look like the Food Network.”

St. Luke’s will also station a nurse practitioner at adjoining Hillsdale Elementary School who will also be a resource for nurses across West Ada School District, Lara said.

In the next year or so, St. Luke’s plans to expand at The Hill and build a 12,000- to 16,000-square-foot free-standing clinic adjacent to the YMCA.

Hillsdale Park

Meridian Parks & Recreation laid 3.9 acres of sod last year closest to Hillsdale School to give students a play area for the whole 2017-18 school year. The other 6.1 acres were seeded with established grass anticipated for Hillsdale Park’s May 25 opening, Meridian Parks director Steve Siddoway said.

The park pays homage to the Hill family ranch that it replaces. One playground element is in the shape of a tractor, roofs for two picnic shelters have a barn look,  the Hill cattle brand is incorporated in the eaves and park benches resemble hay bales.

Park construction that started in March 2017 is largely complete, though exercise stations along the loop path still need to be installed and grass is not yet in place in the area between the park and the YMCA, Siddoway said

“The most unique thing (about Hillsdale Park) is the partnership,” Siddoway said. “The park didn’t have to build any parking. The school and YMCA have parking lots we can use. At the same time, we are providing the playground for the school.”

The park land was all part of a 15-acre donation to the YMCA from married couple Marti Hill and Dixie Cook and Brighton Corp. In turn, the Y passed 10 of those acres on to Meridian Parks & Rec.

Meridian Library

The Meridian Library will get its foothold at The Hill with what director Gretchen Caserotti is calling a “tiny children’s library.”

A 300-square-foot shipping container will be set up between Hillsdale Elementary School and the South Meridian Family YMCA.

The tiny library will be a setting for early literacy and kindergarten readiness with materials to support those programs, Caserotti said.

Eventually, a full branch library is expected at The Hill.