The Gateway Region YMCA's Metro Board of Directors has voted not to renew its lease at the Downtown St. Louis YMCA at the MX, and the branch on the ground floor of the MX Building at Sixth and Locust streets will shut its doors for good on Thursday, December 31, 2026. It's a decision that closes out roughly a century of continuous YMCA presence in downtown St. Louis, a run that stretches back to a 10-story building erected in 1926 just a few blocks away.
The closure is being driven by financial losses tied to a steady drop in membership, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Steve Mastorakos, a spokesperson for the Gateway Region YMCA, told the paper the branch has seen a continuous membership decline since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting annual losses made it impossible to keep up with necessary building investments. Members will retain access to all other regional YMCA facilities through the end of the year.
A Second Downsizing In A Decade
This isn't the downtown branch's first retreat. The YMCA moved its downtown operation from the long-time 10-story facility at 1528 Locust Street in 2016, citing deferred maintenance problems and other issues with that aging building, per the Post-Dispatch's reporting. That move led to the opening of a scaled-down branch inside the MX Building in 2017 with roughly 1,400 members — a footprint that, per NextSTL, dropped amenities like a swimming pool and a basketball court that the old building had offered.
The original 1926 building at 1528 Locust Street has had its own second act. It was redeveloped and reopened in 2023 as the 173-room 21c Museum Hotel St. Louis, according to Frame Magazine. The hotel even marked the building's 100th anniversary last month with a “Party Like It's 1926” celebration, as Hoodline reported in its piece on the century-old hotel's milestone.
Downtown's Broader Struggles
The membership drop behind the closure lines up with wider troubles in downtown St. Louis' commercial core. Office vacancy in downtown St. Louis reached 25.9% overall and 29.7% in the Central Business District during the second quarter of 2025, according to CBRE data cited by KSDK, driven by post-pandemic remote work and corporate tenants leaving the area. Fewer office workers downtown on a daily basis means fewer people walking in for a lunchtime workout or an after-work swim.
Still, Mastorakos emphasized that the YMCA isn't disappearing from the city of St. Louis. He said the organization maintains four other branches nearby — the South City Y, the Bayer Y, the Carondelet Park Rec Complex, and the O'Fallon Park Rec Complex — giving displaced downtown members other options close by. Two of those, Carondelet and O'Fallon, are owned by the City of St. Louis and operated by the YMCA through management agreements, a different arrangement than the leased commercial space downtown that's now closing.
Suburban Growth Contrasts With Downtown Retreat
The downtown closure stands in contrast to investment the Gateway Region YMCA has made elsewhere in the region. In August 2024, the organization partnered with SSM Health to open a 5,000-square-foot medical care clinic inside its Chesterfield YMCA facility, part of a broader push toward integrated healthcare services in growing suburban centers. That kind of capital investment underscores just how different the calculus looks outside the struggling downtown core.
Gateway Region YMCA operates 24 traditional branch locations across Missouri and Illinois, along with two Campus YMCA facilities, early childhood education centers, and YMCA Camp Lakewood in Potosi, Missouri. The organization traces its St. Louis roots back to 1853, giving it more than 170 years of history in the metro area — a history that, come January, will no longer include a dedicated branch in the heart of downtown.
