The Emerald Coast Fitness Foundation

The Emerald Coast Fitness Foundation

Our History

In January of 2015, four swim enthusiasts sat around a kitchen table in Fort Walton Beach brainstorming about how to bring public pools back to local communities. All of the pools closed overnight 10 years ago when the local YMCA went bankrupt.

The middle school competitive swim season had been set to begin in two weeks, leaving hundreds of young athletes without a place to practice or compete. Those students were just a fraction of those who depended on the YMCA pools for fitness, competitive opportunities, swim lessons, and the sense of community that forms around a pool.

Generations grew up swimming in the FWB indoor pool, which dates back to the 1980s. The Destin YMCA had opened in 2007, but struggled financially almost since the beginning.

Still, the closures stunned the communities they served.

“‘What are we going to do?’ was the big question,” recalled Kathi Heapy, one of the foursome around that kitchen table.

By the end of that long ago conversation, Kathi and Gary Heapy, as well as Pam and Bruce Braseth, had decided to form a nonprofit.

Each couple put in money to give the fledgling Emerald Coast Fitness Foundation some legs and they went to work, starting with the pool in Fort Walton Beach. They faced many obstacles, not the least of which was the complicated ownership issues surrounding the property. The Air Force had leased it to the city with the stipulation that it be used for recreation. The city had leased it to the YMCA, which built the pool and the building.

The solution came from a partnership with Liza Jackson Preparatory School. The popular charter school was in a former Walmart on Mary Esther Boulevard, but had limited athletic facilities. The former YMCA property had a gym, as well as locker rooms and acreage for sports fields.

About five months after ECFF was formed, Pam, Kathi, and three school leaders – including new principal Kaye McKinley – sat down to see if they could find a way to work together.

“We are educators and not swimmers. We’re not in the business of teaching people to swim and managing a swimming pool,” Kaye recalled of initial concerns. “(Founder) Terri (Roberts) and the board kept emphasizing that it’s a community and we want to save a community resource.”

The women decided each would write a proposal asking the city to lease the facility to them. If the foundation was chosen, they would keep the pool and sublette the rest to the school. If the school was chosen, they would sublette the pool to the foundation.

That way, Pam explained, the city had a choice.

Renovations began and fundraising continued. In the end, $250,000 was raised, with large donations from the All Sports Foundation and local business owners, Tim and Sharon Smith, pushing it to completion.

In December of 2015, more than a year after the pools had closed, the Bernie R. LeFebvre Aquatic Center opened, named in honor of Sharon Smith’s father, a local swim coach whose passion for the sport changed the lives of countless young swimmers.

During the Bernie’s first year of operation, the founders heard a disturbing rumor about the Destin facility. They had that one of the proposed future uses for the two-pool facility was to turn it into a marine animal rehabilitation center. Although it would turn out that the Mattie Kelly Arts Foundation, which controlled the facility, could not have used it for that purpose due to lease restrictions, the ECFF founders went back to work.

Another $250,000 later and months of renovations, the facility now known as the Taj Renee Community Aquatic Center reopened in August of 2017. This larger facility boasts a seasonal family pool with a slide and an eight-lane 25-yard competition pool that’s open year-round. About 20 swim meets a year are hosted at the Taj, which has a large enough pool deck to accommodate spectators. It’s also home to the Panhandle Pirates Water Polo Club.

Both pools are used for everything from water safety and competitive swimming, to aquacise, lap swim, water polo and birthday parties. They are the only publicly accessible pools in Okaloosa County. The foundation has more than 5,000 registered members and dozens of business sponsors. But operating a community pool is not for the faint-hearted. Even with a goal of breaking even every year, it’s a journey.

“People who didn’t know me and Pam when we started this whole process thought we were crazy,” recalled Kathi. “The people that knew us, and they knew us because we had coached their kids, they believed that we could do it.

“And we did.”