Fox Valley Family YMCA adding another branch to keep up with growth

The Fox Valley Family YMCA continues to see its membership increase.

It currently serves more than 8,675 members and program participants a year at its two locations in Plano and Sandwich. The Sandwich campus is Fox Valley Family YMCA’s west branch.

To keep up with the growth, work is expected to start soon on a new $16 million, 59,700 square-foot facility at 1520 Cannonball Trail in Bristol that will serve as the Fox Valley Family YMCA’s east branch. The new facility will be located on 26 acres of land on Cannonball Trail and Galena Road.

The $16 million is for the first phase of the project. The project’s first phase is expected to be completed by October 2025.

The project is divided into three phases.

“As we all know, Kendall County is growing and the YMCA is growing as well,” Fox Valley YMCA membership director Angie Heyl-Sanders said during a May 1 presentation and preview of the proposed new facility. “Most of our programs are full and on wait lists.”

The Plano building was built in 1991. The Fox Valley Family YMCA offers a variety of programming, including group exercise classes, strength training, yoga, pickleball and aquatic classes.

Since December 2021, group exercise attendance has grown 25% with an average weekly attendance of 485 participants.

The new facility will include a fitness center equipped with the latest exercise technology and staffed by expert trainers as well as a three-lane walking track.

“We are so excited about that,” Heyl-Sanders said. “We get calls daily to ask if we have an indoor walking track. It will be vital for our seniors in the area.”

It will also feature a supervised area where kids can play while their parents work out. In addition, it will house a multi-purpose gymnasium that will offer three full-size, multi-use courts for basketball, volleyball, and pickleball courts.

Multi-purpose rooms that can be used for group meetings, social gatherings and special programming, including educational workshops, also will be part of the new facility.

The project’s second phase includes an indoor, Olympic-sized pool.

“It will be twice the size of our current pool [in Plano],” Heyl-Sanders said. “And then we’re going to have a future diving pool as well. This will be a necessity so that we can hold huge swim meets here. We’re hoping to build it natatorium style. It will have two-story stadium seating.”

Phase three would add a daycare center that would serve a growing demand for daycare. Fox Valley YMCA currently maintains daycare facilities at its Plano and Sandwich locations.

“They are both full and there are wait lists,” Heyl-Sanders said.

Phases two and three are expected to cost between $10 million to $12 million altogether.

“We can get done as much as we want, depending on what the funding is,” Fox Valley Family YMCA Development Director Melinda Kintz said. “The goal is to raise as much money as we can for the first phase.”

She commended the organization’s board of directors for having the vision for the project.

“The board of directors had the foresight to see the county was growing so quickly and very quickly that the Y was going to be out of space and out of capacity and not able to meet all the goals that they had for the community,” Kintz said. “So 10 years ago they started accumulating this land acre by acre out on Cannonball.”

The land is all paid for, she said. Fox Valley YMCA maintains a scholarship program to ensure that no one is turned away because of financial challenges. Last year, the YMCA awarded 1,126 scholarships to families in need.

Scholarships are funded through its operations and donations.

For more information about the project or to make a donation, go to foxvalleyymca.org.