Janis FontaineA community center, skate park and aquatic center are rising side by side in central Palm Beach County.
Two flagship projects are on track to open side by side in January in central Palm Beach County: The YMCA of the Palm Beaches $43 million Community Center and Skate Park and Palm Beach County’s $36 million Lake Lytal Park Aquatic Center.
This almost $80 million joint venture between the YMCA and Palm Beach County will turn the 55-year-old park into a modern destination for health, wellness and recreation.
This partnership is notable for its size and scope, said Tim Coffield, president and CEO of the YMCA of the Palm Beaches. Each entity will build and finance its own buildings, with the Y leasing about 5 acres for $10 a year under a 50-year, renewable agreement. The Y will manage the aquatic center.
“The county has given land leases to other nonprofits,” Coffield said, “but not with the intent of working together long-term to provide programs and services.”
The Y’s new center will feature a 55,000-square-foot, two-story community center and a nearly 30,000-square-foot Olympic-style skate park. The project, designed by PBK Architects with Hedrick Brothers Construction as general contractor, will triple the size of the YMCA of the Palm Beaches and serve four times as many people — an estimated 18,000 members.
This isn’t your father’s YMCA. Swimming lessons, water safety and fitness will always be part of the Y, but the new model offers more.
“It’s a forward-thinking community hub designed to strengthen families, expand access to wellness and provide youth development resources,” Coffield said.
“One of the key programs will be the Youth Engagement and Resource Center, which will fill the first floor. The goal is to engage every young person who comes through our doors, to find out what their aspirations are,” Coffield said. Then the Y connects them with “individuals who can guide their future.”
Educational, career and mental health counseling will be offered. Kids can get training in the recording studio, learn robotics programming in the STEM lab and study visual arts in the art studio.
A Palm Beach State College workforce development hub is planned. It will offer job training in the construction trades, food service and IT. The community-focused center will have after-school programs and tutoring, and just for fun there’s an e-gaming lounge.
A park designed by Team Pain Skate Parks will be built in the northwest corner of the park once a majority of the community center is completed. Team Pain has built dozens of skate facilities of all types and sizes, including parks in Sarasota, Naples and Casselberry Wheel Park West in Casselberry, Fla., a 40,000 square foot concrete park completed in 2025.
After the center and skate park open, work on Phase 2 of the community center will begin, Coffield said, which includes a gymnatorium (a full basketball gymnasium that can be converted into meeting space) and an indoor track on the second floor.
It will also include a 200-seat child care center.
The aquatic center
The upgrades to the pool complex are substantial, said Jimmy Davis, director of aquatics for the Palm Beach County Parks and Recreation Department.
“We’ve really designed this around competition. We’ve gone to a 72-meter pool,” he said. “We’re going with a Myrtha lining, which is the premier finish for competition pools. They’re considered fast pools and people get quicker times.
“We have a robust swim team program at this location and it’s a centrally located hub for swim meets and diving competitions. It’s situated in a great area to bring people all over from the county, really all over the state, to come and compete.”
Lake Lytal, named for the longest-serving commissioner in Palm Beach County history, has long been home to swim teams and swimming lessons and free lifeguard and water safety instructor training by the American Red Cross. With this modern pool, officials plan to add more opportunities.
The pool has two movable bulkheads so it will be able to accommodate additional sports like water polo and synchronized swimming, Davis said.
The 13-foot deep dive well will have at least three springboards, 1 and 3 meters. “It’s a drastic improvement on what was currently there,” Davis said.
But one of the biggest and expected to be most popular upgrades is the 6,200-square-foot aquatic play zone. “We call it an APZ. It’s a multilevel structure, zero depth, but with tons of water features like tipping buckets and really nice slide runouts.” The existing 60-person-capacity play zone fills up fast during the summer and often has a waiting line. The capacity of the new play zone is 205.
“This is really just a great addition and need for the community.”
The plan includes nearly 15,000 square feet of support buildings with offices, restrooms, showers, storage and training space. There’s another 2,048-square-foot concession building and 1,500-square-foot ticketing/box office building, which will be shared by the county and the Y.
The money
The Y’s responsibility includes $20 million for the community center, $3 million for the skate park and $10 million for an endowment in Phase 1, plus another $9 million for the addition of the child care center and gymnatorium in Phase 2.
“We’ve pretty much raised enough to get Phase 1 built,” Coffield said. Once the drywall and air conditioning are in and they can begin giving construction tours, Coffield is confident donors will be interested in contributing more.
“People in a position to leave a legacy gift will see a project worth investing in,” he said, noting that naming rights for the center are available.
Some private money has been pledged. In 2025, the Palm Beach Daily News reported that Kane Baker, a former board member, made a $1 million direct gift. The fourth-generation Palm Beach resident and his family’s George F. Baker Trust has supported the Y for generations.
“We have people who have donated seven-figure gifts toward the endowment because they like the idea of an endowment,” Coffield said. “And we’ve got about half the money for the skate park.”
This year, the Legislature and Gov. Ron DeSantis approved $1.5 million to help pay for construction of the center. State Sen. Mack Bernard and state Rep. Anne Gerwig sponsored the grant.
“This is the fourth year that we’ve gotten state appropriations for the community center,” Coffield said. “We also got a half a million in federal dollars through HUD with the help of (U.S. Rep.) Lois Frankel’s office.”
Once the Y opens, its day-to-day operating costs are largely covered. “The great thing about the Y is we do generate revenue, so a fair amount of money will be brought in through programs and services,” Coffield said.
About $12.15 million came for the aquatic center from the voter-approved 1-cent sales tax that ended last year.
In June, the Palm Beach County Commission agreed to place a $280 million bond referendum on the ballot in November which would pay for improvements at a slew of parks, including Lake Lytal. It would get about $10 million for field and court modernization (think pickleball!) and $10 million for a future expansion of the aquatic center including a teaching pool.
Meet Lake Lytal
Lake Lytal Park became a park in 1971 on about 78 acres of farmland wedged between Gun Club Road and Southern Boulevard. It had long been a popular fishing spot. Anglers were drawn to the lakes formed in the late 1940s when the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control Project, the precursor to the South Florida Water Management District, began its work on flood control and water supply management.
But Lake Lytal Park wasn’t named for the lakes. It didn’t have an official name until 1975 when it was named for Lake Henry Lytal Sr., the longest-serving commissioner in Palm Beach County history.
Nicknamed Mr. Democrat, Lytal served eight terms over 32 years (from 1942 to 1966 and from 1970 to 1978). He helped establish Little League Baseball in Palm Beach County.
He supported civil rights, including by fighting to integrate drinking fountains at the Palm Beach County Courthouse in the early 1960s.
As for the Y, it’s been invested in Palm Beach County since 1917, and it served the community from its location at 2085 S. Congress Ave. in Palm Springs for more than two decades.
The YMCA bought the 18-acre Palm Springs site where thousands learned to swim in 1986 for $18,500. In 2022, the Y sold the property for $10 million. It is now 264 garden-style apartments with rents that start around $2,100 a month.
Today, the Y serves clients in rented space at the Fountains Country Club building on Lake Worth Road. It moved the Wellness Center to PBSC’s Lake Worth campus, and its aquatics program moved to the pool formerly operated by the Gleneagles Country Club at John Prince Park.
When the new Y opens, they’ll keep the facilities at PBSC and the pool at John Prince Park, too, Coffield said. “We’re looking to not only stay there but expand services.”
The site serves a significant local population. “We get a lot of ‘Silver Sneakers’ there,” he said, referring to the Y’s involvement with Medicare’s free national fitness program for ages 65 and older.
“Our elderly population loves to come there in the morning. At the pool, we do a lot of work there with people with special needs. We have adaptive swim instruction there, and it’s the county’s therapeutic recreation site.” The Y also has a Wellness Center that it plans to keep open on the campus of PBSC in Palm Beach Gardens.
Coffield hopes this project will serve as a model for other communities of what can be done with the private and public sectors work together.
“We’ve built a great relationship with Parks and Recreation and the county commissioners are very supportive. They invited us to participate in the shovel ceremony at the groundbreaking for the aquatic center, and we just feel that it’s going to be a great partnership, and I think the county sees that as well.”
