Durham County commissioners made that official this week, voting unanimously to buy the property at 2119 Chapel Hill Road, fix it up, and put it back to use as a Y and a public middle school.

Chuck Clifton, chairman of the citizens' Committee to Save the Lakewood YMCA, said he was pleased and relieved.

"In the spring, they gave us a preview" of the deal, he said. "But when that happens, you're always a little nervous" until it actually happens.

Clifton also said renovation and continued use of the 42-year-old building provides "a glimmer of hope" for revitalizing all along Chapel Hill Road.

"When I think of the public schools, the YMCA, the county and the Lakewood neighborhood," said deputy county manager Drew Cummings, "I think possibly we have a win-win-win-win situation."

The deal is, Durham County will buy the 57,350-square foot Y building and its 7.4 acres for $250,000; according to county tax records, they are valued at more than $4.5 million.

"Good purchase," Cummings said.

The YMCA may continue using the building as is until renovations begin. Once they are complete, at a cost expected to be about $8 million, the Y gets a 15-year lease on about 18,000 square feet and puts about $850,000 of its own into further upfits while Durham Public Schools uses the rest and, eventually, takes ownership of the building.

After the Monday vote, commissioners Chairwoman Ellen Reckhow and City Council member Mike Woodard credited the Y's preservation to Clifton and the other citizens who organized in the spring of 2007 when the YMCA of the Triangle proposed closing the facility that was falling into disrepair and running a $400,000 annual deficit.

"The Lakewood Y has become the little scabby hound dog," the late Bob Sherrill, a longtime Lakewood Y member, said at that time. "[But] it means more to a lot of people around here than everybody thinks." Losing the Y, the opponents claimed, would create a "sucking void" in the nearby Tuscaloosa-Lakewood and Long Meadow neighborhoods and deprive Durham of a singular place where residents met and socialized without regard to class or color.

Now, said Clifton, "We're getting more than we expected."

As negotiations among the Save-the-Y members, the Y administration and local governments went on, he said, there was talk of "repurposing" -- "about the Y evolving into something other than it was." As it has turned out, though, the Y carries on.

"And we're getting a middle school," he said. "Pretty good."