Centofanti Foundation Gives YMCA's Camp Fitch $300K
BOARDMAN, Ohio -- A $300,000 gift from the James & Coralie Centofanti Charitable Foundation will enable the Youngstown YMCA to build an equestrian center at its Camp Fitch in North Springfield, Pa., and open the facility next summer when the camp celebrates 100 years of operations.
“It’s huge,” Brian Rupe, executive director of Camp Fitch, says of the gift, presented Tuesday at the offices of Farmers Trust Co., which administers the Centofanti fund’s $8 million in assets.
“We’ve done an equestrian program for decades and we’ve done it just by the seat of our pants. This is going to help us to have a good quality state-of–the-art program," Rupe says.
Camp Fitch is preparing to embark on a $1.1 million Century II Capital Campaign. The equestrian center, to be named the James & Coralie Centofanti Equestrian Center, is just one of the camp’s planned improvements. A wastewater treatment plant will be built as will an outdoor amphitheater that will overlook Lake Erie, Rupe says.
The 12,000-square-foot equestrian center will include an educational center.
“Part of it will be an indoor riding arena so we can do lessons in any kind of weather,” Rupe says. “Part of it will be stables for horses. We keep our horses outside most of the time but we need a place to bring them in to tack them and groom them, and teach the kids to do those things. We’ll have a classroom, office space and restrooms as well.”
On hand for the check presentation were directors of the Centofanti foundation -- among them Carol Potter, Mark Graham and Dante Zambrini -- as well as J.D. Mirto, chairman of the YMCA's Camp Fitch Advisory Board and Tim Hilk, CEO of the Youngstown YMCA.
“This generous gift is going to make Camp Fitch even more remarkable,” Hilk said.
The Centofanti Charitable Foundation was created following the death in 2010 of James Centofanti, a Canfield businessman who came to the United States as a young child.
“He did not have a great deal of education,” says his brother, Joe Centofanti, “but he was a very smart man, and a very aggressive businessman who made a lot of the right decisions over his lifetime. He always believed in giving to religious and scholastic activities.”
In addition to the $300,000 gift to Camp Fitch, major donations have gone to fund study programs at Kent State University and Youngstown State University, as well as to support the development of YSU’s center for military veterans.
“When we think of items to contribute to, we try to visualize or put ourselves in the place of the donor, Centofanti says. “Horses were a very important part of my brother’s life. It was his main hobby, and that makes [the Camp Fitch gift] very important to us.”
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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