Renovations aim to improve Naperville’s Fry YMCA

Proposed renovations to Naperville’s Fry Family YMCA aim to eliminate that awkward moment when parents are left deciding whether to take their child into an opposite sex locker room with them or wait outside the appropriate room and hope for the best.

A 12-locker and private family shower locker room is among the highlights of renovations about to begin at the south Naperville facility. Also included in the renovation are two preschool classrooms, a viewing area in front of the pool, and an expanded parking lot.

“Families have been asking for a private locker facility for years and years and years,” Executive Director Judy Ellertson said. “So we’re happy to be able to offer that privacy to them and take away that uncomfortable situation when a mom has to choose whether to bring her 7- or 8-year-old son with her into the women’s locker room.”

The preschool classrooms will be used for licensed partial and full-day preschool programs. Ellertson said a kindergarten after-school program is planned for the 2013-14 school year until Naperville Unit District 203 decides whether to offer all-day kindergarten. Current preschool programs also will be expanded along with evening and weekend classes.

A special groundbreaking ceremony will be held from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Friday at 2120 W. 95th Street in south Naperville. Ellertson said the shell of the new space is expected to be built by late November, which will allow workers to be inside and complete the entire project by March.

The 95th Street Center was opened in December 1995 on the south side of Naperville as a branch of the Heritage YMCA Group. The first expansion was completed in 2000. In fall 2005 the 95th Street Center was renamed the Fry Family YMCA.