The YWCA Lower Cape Fear recently chose an architecture firm to help with an ambitious goal: transforming its swimming pool facility and expanding health and wellness programs to reach more residents.

The nonprofit organization’s board this week chose LS3P to study its property at 2815 S. College Road in Wilmington and come up with conceptual renderings for expansion and renovation, said Velva Jenkins, CEO of the YWCA Lower Cape Fear.

The decision is part of a much larger effort on the part of the local YWCA and those who support its missions.

In recent years, local YWCA officials and community volunteers have been quietly working on a nearly $10 million fundraising campaign to not only revamp and add to the local YWCA’s aquatics center but also boost its empowerment programs.

Jenkins said that, as of Tuesday, the organization was only $20,000 shy of its $4.1 million empowerment program fundraising goal that’s part of the larger campaign. She said the YWCA’s empowerment programs aim to empower women, children and families and include the Grandparents Support Network and child care, among other services. In addition to an aquatics center, the organization’s South College Road property includes a building that holds its Bright Futures Childcare Center, offering full and half-day child care and afterschool care for children ages six weeks to 12 years old.

“We have families that really need affordable childcare,” Jenkins said. “So we keep our child care fees really affordable, and we provide wraparound services as well, like tutoring. We feed them hot, nutritious meals while they’re here. We provide mental health services and therapy for children that may have some type of trauma or learning disability.”

The YWCA also has an early parenting program for teens who are mothers or expectant mothers and a women’s empowerment program that helps women in a variety of ways from rebuilding their lives after domestic violence to boosting their entrepreneurial skills.

Some of the empowerment program money raised so far allowed the YWCA to buy three buses to transport children from school to its program and to fund enrichment field trips.

Jenkins said she expects the revamped aquatics center and other additions to cost close to $6 million, but an all-women team at LS3P will be focused on cost as well as appearance.

“This is going to be a complete health-and-wellness center,” Jenkins said. Part of that effort includes adding “land fitness” to the local YWCA, which currently doesn’t have space for things like yoga or weightlifting.

It will also include installing a permanent enclosure for the organization’s outdoor pool, which has a bubble – a vinyl inflatable cover – that goes up after the summer season.

“It takes about 70-plus people to put that bubble up and take it down,” Jenkins said. And the bubble is also expensive to repair, she added.

The YWCA’s facilities in Wilmington date back to the 1970s, and they’re due for change, she said.

Jenkins said, “I think this is something that our community has long waited for.”