IT'S FUNDS TO PAY FOR A YMCA SUPPORTERS WANT TO RAISE $3 MILLION TO BUILD NEW ONE.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

LANCASTER - YMCA supporters are trying to raise more than $3 million from Antelope Valley residents and businesses to build a new and bigger YMCA center to accommodate the Antelope Valley's growing population.

A loan, a state grant, and the sale of an old YMCA building will provide about $5 million toward the projected $8 million Antelope Valley Family YMCA facility to be built in Lancaster City Park.

``It will take us a few years but it's something that I think is desperately needed in the community,'' said Jim Hawse, president/owner of Sierra Toyota and Lancaster Mitsubishi and the fundraising campaign general chairman.

``It's really going to be a grass-roots effort. We really have to get down and knock on a few doors.''

More than 170 Antelope Valley business and political leaders, many of them who had been involved with the YMCA as children, attended a dinner Thursday night at the Essex House Convention Center to kick off the campaign, which has been in the works for two years.

``What we're really talking about is kids and people and the opportunity to change lives,'' said state Sen. George Runner, who as a boy went to the original local YMCA in downtown Lancaster and camp in Acton, and later got his first job working as a camp counselor.

Depending on how fast donations are generated, YMCA officials hope to break ground in 2007 and to open the building in 2008.

At 35,000 square feet, the new center will be more than twice as big as Lancaster City Park's Stanley Kleiner Activity Center, which it will be built next to.

It will contain an indoor pool, a gymnasium with basketball courts, a fitness area with cardiovascular-training equipment, and child-care and teen centers.

The Antelope Valley YMCA primarily operates now as a child-care and youth sports program center. The YMCA operates five child-care centers at local schools and its Palmdale office, and its Junior Lakes and Shooting Sparks basketball teams draw 1,200 children a year.

Hundreds of youngsters must be turned away for lack of space, officials said.

A market analysis found what it called extraordinarily high demand in the Antelope Valley for programs such as cardiovascular fitness, weight training and aerobics, YMCA officials said. The study said an enlarged YMCA could attract 5,000 families in three years, making it the largest in the Los Angeles area.

Hawse, the campaign chairman, has contributed $500,000 toward the drive, YMCA officials said.

``The Antelope Valley has really been very good for myself and my family. I decided I really needed to give something back,'' Hawse said.