Doors close at CV fitness center

Doors close at CV fitness center.As she’s done many times since the start of this year, Emma Miller got up  Wednesday morning and beat a path to her workout club in Leola.

But it  has become a lot more than just a gym, the 73-year-old Brownstown-area resident  said.

“We really enjoyed it, and we liked their classes. They’re very helpful to all of us … older ladies who came,” she said with a chuckle.

Miller was inside the Conestoga Valley Community Center, which  later Wednesday was closing its doors.

After giving center director Diane  Giles a friendly hug, Miller said she’ll probably find another place to work  out, but emphasized that she’ll miss the camaraderie of the CVCC, 2460 New  Holland Pike.

It was announced last week that the last day of July would  be the final day of operations for the cash-strapped community center, which  closed for good Wednesday at 8 p.m..

The facility, which opened in 1996  and offered fitness and other programs, recently was trying to overcome an  $18,000 deficit.

It had managed to raise some $14,000 in donations from  the community before its landlord informed center officials they had to vacate  the rented building.

An online auction is being planned — starting  Tuesday and running through Tuesday, Aug. 20 — to sell off exercise and office  equipment so the center can pay back those who donated the $14,000 in the effort  to keep it open.

The center’s closing means the loss of jobs there for 28  staff people, many of whom either teach fitness classes elsewhere or are already  going to new jobs.

The club has 420 members. Miller and Maura Shangraw,  of Manheim Township, were among many who came by for the last time  Wednesday.

Miller, who has lived in Conestoga Valley School District  since 1965, even went to a meeting in her community, West Earl Township, “to try  and get some money” for the CVCC, without success.

“With townships, I  don’t think they have any money, either,” she said.

West Earl officials  had donated $10,500 to the center over the last six years, but overall the  center wasn’t able to win enough financial support from local communities to  stay open.

“It’s more than, ‘Come and do our workouts and leave,'”  director Giles said, adding that members “really have made bonds and  friendships.”

“It’s been a hard week,” she said, but with a smile. “This  is the hardest part of (saying goodbye), but there really has been so much more  good that’s come out of it than any of the rough spots.

“I just want to  keep celebrating that part of it, and hopefully run into all of these people  somewhere else.”

On Thursday, officials will begin taking photographs of  the items that will be auctioned.

Details on the online-only auction are  available at www.kellerauctioneers.com, and all items purchased must be  picked up between Aug. 24 and 27, officials said.

The fitness center had  a lot of original members still there recently and “have seen us through a lot  of good and bad times,” Giles noted.

Shangraw told how she exercised with  a group that has worked out together for years, “so we’re real disappointed that  the gym as a whole is closing. It does become like a family.”

Read more:  http://lancasteronline.com/article/local/877781_Doors-close-at-CV-fitness-center.html#ixzz2ailZUP66