Things were looking grim for a member of the Peter Blum Family YMCA of Boca Raton—she had just lost her husband and was moving into an assisted-living facility. She told Bryan Hunt, the campus’s executive director, that it didn’t feel like home anymore. Always the problem solver, he and her friends from the Y collected photos and put them into picture frames. She was in tears when she opened the gift from her second family.
“Now she can take her Y to her home,” he says. “That’s what this facility does; that’s what this YMCA does.”
Hunt lives and breathes the YMCA—it was his first job as a teenager in New York City, and he’s since worked at the Cross Island YMCA in New York, Treasure Coast YMCA and Central Florida YMCA. But it’s here in Boca Raton that he’s grown roots. On the day Boca magazine visited, Hunt seemed to know everyone. He said hello to a man getting started on his workout at the gym, preschoolers swimming in the shallow end of the pool, two ladies chatting after their yoga class, and teens shooting hoops in the gymnasium. It wasn’t even a busy day, either. As the population of Boca Raton grows (we’re at more than 102,000 now), so do the needs of the community and the services provided by the YMCA.
“A lot of our programming is at capacity. Our childcare is at capacity, our after-school, our summer camp, ourpreschool is at capacity,” Hunt says.
Last spring, the YMCA launched the Building Possibilities capital campaign to raise funds to help grow the facility. The goals: increase space by at least 50% for the Y’s programming, as well as increase youth and community space by 65% for “highly curated and specialized programs.” That means expanding the preschool, wellness center, gymnasium, great lawn, locker rooms and much more. In five years, this would impact an additional 8,000 members, particularly children, teens, members with special needs, seniors, and those needing financial assistance.
Hunt is confident in the endeavor, which will be funded by private donations and government funding. He points to Chase’s Place, an inclusive program for people with special needs ages 5 to 22 that was built in honor of Chase Donoff, who was autistic, thanks to his parents Craig and Judi Donoff’s $500,000 fund. Private donations are vital, especially as the YMCA is seeing cuts in government funding. In the meantime, Hunt’s problem-solving skills are coming in handy. For example, last summer, the YMCA partnered with Slam Boca to allow for 50 more summer camp spaces.
“We also serve underprivileged communities, and some of the funding for those areas is not coming in,” Hunt says. “We’re not receiving it, but we don’t want to stop serving them. … We have to find a solution.”
While the YMCA continues to push for the public to get involved in the Building Possibilities capital campaign, Hunt continues his work on campus. It’s all about connections, he says. Parents can work out while their kids play in daycare, teens can make new friends over video games, toddlers learn to swim, children and adults with developmental disabilities hang out at Chase’s Place, and then there’s the endless schedule of fitness, sports leagues, and cooking and arts classes.
Hunt says, “The level of impact that’s happening here on a day-to-day basis, sometimes it’s overwhelming.”
To support the YMCA, visit ymcaspbc.org/building-possibilities.
This story is from the September/October 2025 issue of Boca magazine. For more like this, click here to subscribe to the magazine.
