Archive: Around Town

More than 40 Tompkins County community leaders attended the inauguration of the new Ithaca Y Camp Adventureland Tuesday morning.  In a twist on ribbon cuttings, 70 campers and their counselors ran through ribbons on their way to a camp area on 110 acres of land the Y owns off of Mecklenburg Road.

"What is here is not too complicated," says Ithaca Y CEO Frank Towner.  "If we can get kids outside we think it improves their health, it improves their mental state, spirit, mind, and body."

The 110-acre Mecklenburg Road parcel was donated to The Y in 1984.  When Towner applied for the CEO position last year he already had his eye on the property to establish a Y camp.  This year he wasted no time in making it a reality.


70 kids are attending Camp Adventureland, which started two weeks ago.  Y staff members built natural lean-tos, and campers are adding roofs and sides to the structures.  Campers go on hikes through the 100 acre wooded parcel, and are learning survival skills such as starting a fire, and 'orienteering' through the woods using a compass.  13 counselors and 4 counselors-in-training are running the camp this summer.

Towner says this summer is a slow wind-up for the camp, which will grow over the course of years as the Y raises funds and grants to expand the program.  Most of the wooded property is untouched now, with a small gathering area with lean-tos campers are helping to build and a seating area for gatherings and campfires.

"The biggest dream is a long term plan of having a retreat center," Towner says.  "It would be a naturally built retreat center that would give people the information about what they are going to see and experience before they go in the woods -- what to do and what not to do.  Right now it's about minimal structures."


Before the camp could open the Y needed a parking lot.  That cost over $14,000 taken from a long term fund for special projects.  Towner says that makes it possible to run the camp and to apply for grants that support the concept of the facility.  He says he hopes grants will pay for future programming.

"We purposely made the decision to go slow," Towner says.  "We don't need to build something to create something.  Kids are getting what they need by being in the woods and being with each other.  We know through studies that children from all walks of life and all levels of income and all sizes and shapes create a neutral environment in the woods.  It really comes down to having fun and using the woods to create that fun."

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