Schottland Family YMCA

NY State’s Largest YMCA Branch is a Model for Health and Wellness

Located in Pittsford, New York, on the corner of Clover Street and Jefferson Road, this state-of-the-art recreation facility is the largest branch in New York and one of the largest in the United States. It serves the local region of Pittsford, Mendon, Brighton, and Henrietta, New York. The Schottland Family YMCA is a national model for the integration of health and wellness.

The recreation facility is the cornerstone of the owner’s 10-year Strengthening Communities Campaign. The campaign remains focused on improving programs and addressing urgent human-service needs for children, youth, adults, and seniors with diverse backgrounds. This is being uniquely accomplished at the recreation facility through the Y’s robust partnership with UR Medicine.

The goal of the design was to provide a destination that would promote healthy living and provide opportunities to give back to the surrounding neighborhood. On the selected site, a two-story building with a walkout base level on the north side and a new 675-car parking lot was designed with landscaping, access drives, playgrounds, a community garden, a shed, sidewalks, and stormwater management facilities.  Additionally, a trail surrounds the natural area adjacent to the wetland pond and existing wetland area for educational use. Lastly, the site also had to include a 5.6-acre buffer to the properties on the west.

Amenities and services to meet the needs of individuals, families, children, and seniors include two pools with a splash pad, three gymnasiums with tracks, a childcare center, preschool classrooms, a wellness center, group exercise studios, a cycling studio, a senior center, locker rooms, and a community partnership with the University of Rochester Medical Center to provide a wellness hub, just to name a few.

LaBella’s in house team performed all design and engineering services for the new branch.

Program elements like pools, child care, and walk-out lower levels require engineering solutions that perform for humidity, energy consumption, and retaining walls. Read how each of our buildings engineering disciplines approached this project.

Mechanical

Heating and cooling are provided with packaged rooftop units with direct expansion cooling, natural gas preheat, heat recovery, variable air volume fan systems and utilize hot gas reheat to provide dehumidification where applicable. A hot water boiler supplies hot water throughout the building to variable air volume boxes with hot water reheat coils, duct mounted reheat coils, radiant floor heating, and other heating terminal equipment such as unit heaters and cabinet unit heaters throughout the building. Sidewalk snow melting is provided with a heat exchanger and antifreeze fluid mixture. The aquatic center is conditioned using a rooftop heat recovery pool dehumidification unit. This dehumidifies the space by exchanging less humid outdoor air with the indoor pool area in a very energy efficient manner

Plumbing and Fire Protection

Plumbing systems include domestic cold water service with main meter and dual RPZ backflow preventers. Domestic hot water system consists of dual 650 gallon indirect storage tanks with indirect tube bundles served by the heating-hot water system. Domestic hot water serves multiple locker rooms, training kitchen, café, heat exchangers for pool and hot tub heating, and gang toilet rooms. Café and training kitchen are also served by exterior underground polyethylene grease interceptor. Natural gas system consists of multiple pressure piping serving heating boilers and packaged rooftop units, each with individual dedicated pressure regulators. Emergency eye wash stations with safety mixing valves were provided for the pool chemical storage and boiler rooms. Storm water drainage system consisted of siphonic roof drains and piping. Fire protection system consists of wet automatic sprinklers compliant with NFPA-13, and include concealed and exposed piping, floor control valves, and fire department connection.

Electrical

The building has a 2000A, 480Y/277V electrical service with provisions for a portable generator hook up. LED lighting is used throughout the building, including sports lighting in the gymnasium and natatorium. The team designed the telecommunication, fire alarm, and security systems.

Structural

Structural Engineering provided a shallow spread footing substructure design along with cantilevered basement retaining walls. The superstructure design consisted of long span steel trusses, both premanufactured and custom, composite metal deck floors supported by a steel moment resisting frame along with masonry shear wall elevator and stair shafts.

Image Gallery
The indoor pool features many play features for children.
A tiered, theater-style, 100 person cycle stadium is a unique feature of the Schottland YMCA.

Celebrating the “Y of the Future”

The YMCA of Greater Rochester officially broke ground for its newest branch “to be one of the largest in the country” at 11 a.m. Monday, May 21. The 140,000-square-foot facility was constructed on 20 acres at the corner of Clover Street and Jefferson Road in Pittsford.

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Schottland Family YMCA