Fox Valley Family YMCA to break ground this month on new building

The Fox Valley Family YMCA will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for its planned new $16 million east branch location at noon Aug. 27.

The general public is invited to attend the ceremony, which will be held at the site of the future facility at 1520 Cannonball Trail in Bristol. The facility will be built on 26 acres at the intersection of of Galena Road and Cannonball Trail.

The 59,700 square-foot facility is set to open its doors to the community in late 2025. The new facility will serve the growing number of people who use the Fox Valley Family YMCA.

Fox Valley YMCA currently serves more than 8,600 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.

The project is divided into three phases. The $16 million is for the first phase of the project, expected to be completed by October 2025.

“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.

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

“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, along with 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 day care center that would serve a growing demand for day care. Fox Valley YMCA currently maintains day care facilities at its Plano and Sandwich locations.

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

Phases 2 and 3 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.