After closing in 2020, the La Jolla YMCA team looks forward to welcoming the community back into the Herschel Avenue space.
After a five-year closure due to COVID, the Shepherd YMCA Firehouse at 7877 Herschel Ave in The Village will reopen Sept 1, offering exercise and childcare options to members once again.
The YMCA will also host a Grand Re-Opening event from 8 am to noon Saturday, Sept 6, with special activities and deals on memberships.
Dan McKinney YMCA Executive Director Vince Glorioso and associate executive director Lucy Murillo
“We always knew that we wanted to come back and reactivate this space, and be back in the community,” said Lucy Murillo, associate executive director for Firehouse and the Dan McKinney YMCA, a La Jolla fixture for 61 years.
The YMCA team conducted surveys of current and past members and the La Jolla community, asking what they’d like to see in a reopened Shepherd YMCA.
Respondents indicated “they wanted the YMCA back as a family community center,” Murillo said. “They wanted their gym space, … group exercise, child watch.”
“That’s when the Firehouse came back to life,” she said.
“This is the most activity in five years,” Dan McKinney YMCA Executive Vince Glorioso said at a special preview Aug 22.
The Shepherd YMCA Firehouse now sports all-new gym and workout equipment, including step mills, treadmills, bicycles and ellipticals, plus the integration of EGYM, an AI-run, individualized circuit workout that improves strength, cardio and flexibility, Murillo said.
“Once I scan into my machine, … it’s going to remember me,” she said, adding the machines will customize a workout’s reps and resistance for each person, often offering a full body workout in fewer than 20 minutes.
“It’s my personalized personal trainer. I don’t have to worry about it,” she said.
Shepherd YMCA Firehouse will also soon have Pilates reformer classes and group exercise classes like Body Pump, Zumba and yoga.
Child watch will be available for children from six months to 12 years old, so parents can drop their kids off while they work out.
There will be monthly parents nights out, Murillo said, “so you come and drop [the kids] and then hang out in the La Jolla Village, have a date night” or other activity.
The Firehouse also has a multipurpose room for workshops and other activities, a small area of desks for those who want to work and more.
The La Jolla YMCA team wants “to be more accessible to our entire community,” Murillo said.
“Especially during the summer, it gets pretty crowded, and we want to be able to give that flexibility, that freedom to [members to] come and get their workout and then enjoy the rest of La Jolla.”
The Firehouse location is so-named as it first opened in 1913 as Fire Station 13, and has had a varied history over the last century-plus.
From a police station and lifeguard headquarters to a library storage facility and theater program home, the Shepherd YMCA Firehouse has always been a community space, Glorioso said.
The building was renovated and opened in 2016 as a satellite gym space for the YMCA with leased equipment, which was all returned when it closed in 2020 for COVID, sitting empty for years.
The Shepherd YMCA Firehouse will be open normally from 8 am to noon and 4 to 7 pm Mondays through Thursdays; 8am to noon Fridays; and 8 am to 1 pm Saturdays.
