Few can argue with the need for a new YMCA building in downtown Jamestown.

The existing Fourth Street building was built for a different time — many spaces are cramped because they were designed for the 1930s rather than the 2020s. Systems installed decades ago are failing, amenities installed when Eisenhower and Kennedy were president are showing their age and parking in the area is a remnant of a time when people parked and walked to their destination.

It’s time for a new YMCA building.

But what is the best way to go about it? What should the new building have? Most importantly, what does the community need?

Those are questions the YMCA board of directors has been wrestling with for the past few years. Now, it’s time for the YMCA board to take those questions to the community that will be asked to help pay for a $20 million building –albeit a much-needed new $20 million building.

Our community’s resources are finite, and we seem to be in a constant cycle of community fundraising campaigns for worthy projects undertaken for the best of reasons. But as our capacity for community fundraising becomes stretched, it becomes necessary, in our opinion, for increased coordination among agencies that serve similar populations. In the case of the new YMCA building, the building should be designed so that it doesn’t duplicate other recently built items in the community and so that it dovetails with other items planned for the community.

Of course, that level of planning makes the project more complicated. What program space needs to be housed at the YMCA that could possibly be housed in other locations? What athletic space is needed for YMCA programs that isn’t already available in countless other locations? How can the YMCA partner with school districts and other non-profits to make sure this new $20 million project isn’t competing with other multi-million projects?

In our view, we spend too much time working in individual silos that it’s easy to lose sight of the ways our agencies — public and private — are interconnected. As we move into a new round of capital investment in the community we should endeavor to invest our limited resources in ways that complement each other so that the community is investing as wisely as it can.