Family-friendly, accessible changing rooms coming to YMCA

Two locker rooms, separated by gender, just isn’t going to cut it anymore. The YMCA of Ithaca and Tompkins County is in the process of fundraising to make its locker rooms more accessible for all of its members by creating a family-friendly locker room.

“We have a challenge at the YMCA,” said CEO Frank Towner. “We have over 500 individual lessons and these lessons are for all ages, and what we have is parents – male or female, grandparents or aunts and uncles – coming with young children, or other family members who need an individual changing area, rather than going into the boys locker room or the girls locker room.”

Maybe it’s a dad with a young daughter who doesn’t want to go in the boy’s locker room, or vice-versa. The current setup just isn’t working for everyone. So, the YMCA did some investigating and found that new YMCAs that are being built are including family-friendly, or “universal,” changing rooms with private areas for changing and lockers for storage.

“It provides a couple of things,” Towner said. “A need for security, it allows people to be secure in a general space, but enclosed so they can change and take care of their loved one or their family member without opening themselves up to a whole locker room.”

The plan for the new universal locker room will include eight “pods” for privacy while changing, including one larger pod for wheelchair accessibility, and individual showers.

The fundraising campaign, playfully named the April Showers campaign, is looking to raise $25,000 to be matched by a grant from the Triad Foundation. Towner said the YMCA doesn’t have the money in the budget to do the renovations on its own, it needs the donations and matching grant to make it happen.

“This was more out of need than it was out of planning,” Towner said. “It was clear that families and children were not being served properly.”

With the fundraiser and the grant, Towner said $50,000 should cover the entirety of the renovations.

The YMCA has been hearing this critique from its members for a while now. The $50,000 will cover the renovation of one of the current locker rooms, but Towner said that ultimately the YMCA would like to renovate both of them.
The money needs to be raised by June 17. As soon as the funds have been raised construction will start.

“We can’t do this without you,” Towner said. “Please help us accomplish one, and then we’ll work towards getting the other one done.”

Once construction starts, Towner said they anticipate that it will take three weeks for the renovations to be complete on the girl’s locker room. YMCA summer camps start the week of July 1, and the goal is to have construction done around that time.

A YMCA member who is familiar with the problem that the family-friendly locker room aims to address offered to help the organization by creating some renderings for the project. Scott Jones from Jones Accessible Homes is a father who has been faced with the locker room dilemma at the YMCA himself. When he heard that the YMCA was going to renovate, he used his skills to help create the plans for the new space.

“It’s a response to a community concern, and it’s a community effort,” Towner said.

Find more information about the project, and how to donate, on ithacaymca.com.