Théoden Janes: The fight over the Morrison YMCA isn’t really about a building
Angie Hawisher was walking into the Morrison Family YMCA last month when her phone rang.
It was her daughter, calling to say she’d just seen a story that the YMCA of Greater Charlotte had announced a plan to sell the Ballantyne facility.
“And I burst into tears,” Hawisher recalled. “I couldn’t believe it. I was just — I couldn’t believe it. I was so upset. So I walked into the Y, and ... I said, ‘Please tell me this isn’t true.’”
But it was.
For more than two decades, she’d built part of her life around the Morrison Y.
She and her husband even chose their house in part because it was within walking distance of the Morrison Y. It had been there when her children were little, offering childcare while she exercised. As the kids grew, they moved into youth sports, camps and other activities there. Then, after they went off into adulthood, came something Hawisher hadn’t expected: friendships of her own.
Now 60, she spends five mornings a week in group fitness classes with people who ask about her family, celebrate milestones and, not long ago, spotted something on her back that they were concerned she ought to have checked by a doctor.
That’s why it was such a blow for her to learn that the YMCA of Greater Charlotte was selling the building and its 22-acre property to Moments of Hope Church for $42.5 million. The branch is expected to close when the sale closes next summer, after which members will be encouraged to use nearby YMCAs.
But she and many other longtime members haven’t become increasingly upset in recent weeks because they will then have to travel a bit farther to use another Y. They’re upset because the community they’ve spent decades building will have to scatter.
And while — from a distance — it might look like they’re just arguing over a gym, after spending the last two days talking to people whose lives revolve around the Morrison Y, I don’t think that’s what this fight is about at all.
Because nobody I spoke with started by talking about treadmills.
Instead, like Hawisher, they talked about the chapters of their lives.
‘Ballantyne has grown around this place’
Again and again, people described the Morrison Y as one of the few places where they routinely bumped into neighbors, made friends and watched relationships deepen over time.
Smita Warrier laughed remembering the first time a coach at Morrison told her to warm up by running a mile. At the time, she couldn’t even run one.
Years later, the Y had introduced her not only to exercise but to friendships that led her into Charlotte’s running community and eventually to a feat that made her something of a local running celebrity: completing seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. She described Morrison as one of the “third places” that quietly anchor a person’s life, somewhere people keep showing up until strangers become friends.
Susan Black said the Morrison Y follows her outside its walls.
“When you see the people you know at Harris Teeter or a restaurant, it’s like people seeing their church friends out in the community,” she said. “Ballantyne has grown around this place. I don’t know how that can continue without it.”
People who work at Morrison described it in similar terms, too.
A woman who teaches fitness classes there described members lingering after the workout was over instead of heading straight home, swapping stories about injuries, grandchildren, vacations and whatever else is happening in their lives. Those conversations, she said, are as much a part of the Morrison Y as the classes themselves.
A longtime member who now works part-time at Morrison told me she has watched families move through the building for years — first as young parents dropping children off at childcare, then as volunteers, then as empty nesters discovering new friendships.
After talking to all of them, it became clear that the Morrison YMCA wasn’t simply a place people belonged. It was a place that kept giving people new ways to belong.
And places like that may be especially rare in Ballantyne, a community built largely around subdivisions, shopping centers and wide roads rather than the kinds of gathering places that often anchor older communities.
Maybe that’s why the reaction to its planned sale has been so intense.
Not just a fight over a real estate deal
To my surprise, Sue Glass didn’t dispute any of this.
Rather than saying that Morrison wasn’t special, the president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Charlotte insisted it was. “(It) actually is the epitome of what we try to accomplish as an organization,” she said. “It is our mission in action.”
So I asked her what felt like the obvious question: If Morrison embodies that vision, how did leadership become comfortable giving it up?
Instead of pushing back, she acknowledged the contradiction. Not only that, but she kept saying things like, “it’s really hard,” “it’s a dichotomy,” “it’s not easy to carry this burden.”
She also didn’t try to wave off or discount people’s grief. “We understand and also … we are having to grieve the loss of that as well through this decision-making, and I think sometimes as leaders — especially for the Y here — we’re having to hold on to two truths at once.”
She repeatedly returned to the same idea. “We also have to remember,” she said, “that our buildings don’t define our mission, but also honoring the fact that these buildings do carry a special place in people’s hearts and minds.”
Yes, she admitted, Morrison embodied the vision. The difficult part, from the YMCA’s perspective, was that selling it would help fund that vision elsewhere: The nonprofit says the money will accelerate a $100 million plan to renovate and expand other YMCA facilities across the region, in line with its strategic plan.
That’s where this story became more complicated than a fight over a real estate deal.
What struck me most was that the two sides actually agree on what a Y should be. They just strongly disagree about whether sacrificing a beloved community hub is justified if it strengthens the YMCA’s ability to create and sustain community across the broader region.
They also disagree — strongly — about whether places like Morrison can truly be recreated once they’re gone.
‘The relationships are not interchangeable’
Psychologist Amy Canevello, who studies relationships and belonging at UNC Charlotte, helped articulate all of this for me.
She explained that people don’t simply become attached to other people. They also become attached to the places that make those relationships possible.
Those places become part of how we experience belonging, and losing one, she said, can feel less like changing gyms than moving to a new city. “Even within the Y of Charlotte ... every location is going to have its own kind of personality. They’re not interchangeable. The relationships are not interchangeable.”
Suddenly, something I’d been hearing over and over again made sense.
The people I interviewed weren’t mourning the loss of a building. They were mourning the loss of the routines that kept introducing them to one another — the Tuesday morning fitness class, the conversation after yoga, the parent they always saw at swim lessons, the familiar faces that slowly became friends.
Those ordinary routines are how communities keep replenishing themselves.
Because communities don’t survive on memories alone. They survive at places like the Morrison YMCA as people keep renewing them.
For Angie Hawisher, it isn’t an abstract idea.
For now, she can still make the 10-minute walk to the Morrison YMCA. But one day soon, she’ll have to walk — or drive — someplace else, and hope that, over time, it comes to feel like home.
This story was originally published July 16, 2026 at 5:00 AM.
