David Martorano
After receiving a $1.5 million matching grant from Lexmark to expand the North Lexington Family Y, David Martorano, YMCA of Central Kentucky’s president and CEO, decided it was also time to launch the long-planned Hamburg Y.
“I had been talking about it for about a year and a half with individuals within the community, and every day people asked us, ‘When’s the Y coming?’ So really it was based on community need and really servicing that end of our city,” Martorano said of the May announcement that the Hamburg Y — originally announced in 2006 before being tabled in 2009 due to the sluggish economy — was back on track.
Martorano, who has headed the Y since January of last year, said the group’s capital campaign to fund the 3,500-square-foot expansion of the north side location, as well as to construct the new Y, is in the “final stages of completion.” Like the north side location, on land donated by Lexmark, the Hamburg Y, slated for Old Rosebud off Sir Barton, will be on 10 acres donated in 2006 by Bill Gatton.
The north side Y partners closely with its major benefactor, Lexmark, for use by its employees, and the Hamburg location is in the process of recruiting area employers who are looking to improve the health of their workforce.
Martorano said the Y is hoping to partner with “corporations that want to really drive their employees’ health.”
“The future is providing incentives for employees to stay more healthy and more active. It’s the only way companies are going to be able to pay for health insurance,” he said.
When the Y partners with companies, it is able to provide information to the employers to show how often the memberships are being used and is in the process of rolling out new technology that will allow the Y to provide information to the employers on how the memberships are being used.
“Whatever a company is interested in terms of measurables, we can provide it to them,” he said of the new software being introduced called MobileFit.
“Employers are constantly challenged with new ways to incentivize employees to be healthy and to reduce their claims locally,” he said of some of the more recent strategies of community partnerships the Y is undertaking.
Martorano also cautioned against viewing the organization from a person’s own experience.
“Your experience with the Y may only be what you experienced; you may have been in swimming lessons as a young person, and that’s maybe what you know about the Y, but the Y is so much more than that,” he said. “We’re more than a gym and a swim.”
“With the scope and scale of the Y, we’ll be able to provide a full gamut of services that we feel no one else can provide, such as after- school [activities], camps, all of our health and wellness services, our aquatics facilities, whether its recreational or arthritis classes for seniors,” he said.
About David Martorano
Age: 45
Title: President and CEO of the YMCA of Central Kentucky
Previous employment: Vice president of operations for the YMCA of Greater Cincinnati
Education: Master’s degree in organizational leadership from Springfield College (Mass.) and a bachelor’s degree in physical education from the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point
Hometown: Cudahy, Wisc.