That's the question circulating on Pace Facebook groups right now, attached to an online petition aimed at Santa Rosa County officials. According to a Yahoo News report, the current site plans for the YMCA of Northwest Florida do not include a pool.
The proposed Pace Y would occupy three existing structures at 4037 Pace Road, directly across the street from S.S. Dixon Elementary School. Those buildings currently serve as a warehouse operated by Hometown Contractors LLC. Under the preliminary plans, the roughly 22,350 square feet of existing space would be divided into a 3,200 square foot community area, 4,700 square feet for kids and teens, a 12,250 square foot wellness area, a group exercise room and shared office space. That's an adaptive reuse project working within four walls that already exist, not a ground-up build where a pool gets penciled in from day one.
YMCA of Northwest Florida CEO Michael Bedenhausen has been direct about where things stand. The organization hasn't purchased the property yet. Representatives met with Santa Rosa County's Planning and Zoning Department on August 27 for a pre-application meeting, the informal step where county staff reviews preliminary plans before a formal review even begins. Bedenhausen described the effort as still working through engineering, site capacity and financial review. In other words, the pool petition landed in the middle of due diligence, not after a final decision.
That timing matters if you live here and have an opinion. A pre-application meeting is exactly the moment when scope questions like this one still have somewhere to go. Once a nonprofit closes on land and locks engineering plans around three existing buildings, adding a pool means adding acreage, plumbing and a construction budget that the current reuse plans do not include.
The Restaurants Got Here First
While the Y works through zoning steps, Pace's dining scene has already moved. Bar-Celona opened this spring, bringing a tapas concept its owners say northern Santa Rosa County has never had before, built directly from their own travels across Spain and Europe. It's a different kind of bet than the chain expansion that reached Pace roughly a year earlier, when Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q opened its location here as part of a company with 48 total restaurants concentrated mostly in Georgia and Alabama. One restaurant imported a concept from overseas. The other imported a proven formula from three states over. Both landed in Pace within about a year of each other, and neither one needed a zoning hearing to do it.
That's the practical difference between private dining investment and public civic infrastructure. A restaurant group signs a lease, builds out a kitchen and opens. A nonprofit building a community center has to buy land it doesn't own yet, get through county review, and settle a budget before a shovel touches the ground. Pace's restaurant scene can answer demand in months. Its civic amenities move on a different clock entirely.
The Screen Got New Paint, Not New Owners
Pace's other recent local news item is quieter but tells a related story. The Ridge Cinema 8 recently went through a rebrand, along with its sister locations, the Breeze Cinema 8 in Gulf Breeze and the Marquis Cinema 10 in Crestview. All three have been under the same ownership, the Offerdahl family, since they opened, and the company now operates under the name Ashbrie Cinemas with updated logos, site upgrades and a new marketing push. Nothing changed hands. An existing local asset got reinvested in rather than replaced, which is its own kind of vote of confidence in where Pace is headed.
The Church Filled the Room Before the Y Broke Ground
The clearest sign that Pace has real, unmet demand for gathering space showed up on August 9, when Crosspoint Church launched its new Pace campus. About 300 people filled the first service, capping nearly a year of preparation and kicking off a teaching series aimed at helping parents pass on their faith at home. That's not a chain restaurant testing a market. That's a room full of people showing up the first week a space opened, in a town where the YMCA proposal down the road is still negotiating its own square footage.
What's Actually Open Versus What's Still Being Decided
| Project | Status | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Bar-Celona | Open (spring 2026) | New concept, private investment, no public review required |
| Jim 'N Nick's Bar-B-Q | Open (established) | Chain expansion, same fast track |
| Ridge Cinema 8 / Ashbrie rebrand | Complete | Existing owner reinvesting, not new ownership |
| Crosspoint Church Pace campus | Open (launched Aug. 9) | Nearly a year of prep, strong turnout at launch |
| YMCA of Northwest Florida, Pace site | Pre-application stage | Land not yet purchased, engineering and site capacity still under review |
Four of the five rows on that list are already open for business. The fifth is the one asking residents for patience, and it's the one that involves public land use, a nonprofit budget and a school across the street.
Why This Matters If You Live Here
None of this means the Pace Y won't eventually get a pool. It means the version currently in front of county planners is built around reusing a warehouse, and a pool isn't part of that footprint. If a pool matters to your family, the petition and any conversation with county officials or the YMCA arrive at a useful time. The organization is still in what Bedenhausen called the contracted due diligence period, and engineering and financial review remain open questions.
It also means something broader about how Pace is filling in right now. The parts of town that respond to demand quickly, restaurants, a cinema rebrand, a church launch, are already responding. The part that moves through public process, a shared community building serving a growing corridor, is doing exactly what public process does: taking longer, and getting decided by whoever shows up to the meetings.
Team Smallwood tracks projects like this one because keeping up with what's actually changing in Pace, not just what's for sale in Pace, is part of knowing the town. If you want the read on what's really happening here, from a new site plan to a new sign on Highway 90, reach out to Bastion Realty South anytime.
