Cary Needs a Pool

The Morrisville Aquatics & Fitness Center (MAFC) pool is now open and boy did they get almost everything right. Unlike other recently built area pools, I’m looking at you NW Cary YMCA, this pool appears to have been built by a group that actually knows something about swimming. Here are some of the highlights:

• Continuous gutters
• 8 ft deep end
• Permanent starting blocks
• No wall water return jets
• Separate leisure / kids pool areas
• Lap swim friendly water temperature
• Retractable roof to allow fresh air / sunlight in

The only minor quibbles I have are the pool is only 6 lanes and the lane lines look like they use 4″ floats. Definitely where the money ran out. But other than that it’s a fantastic pool. I love the almost all glass structure with retractable roof segments. It’s like swimming outdoors year round only with better temperature regulation.

This is truly the pool Cary should have built (well, maybe 8 lanes with a little more deck space for meets). Thankfully Morrisville is surrounded by Cary and they offer really low per swim rates even for non-residents. So thank you Morrisville. You’re a relatively small town yet you were able to do what the bigger and better financed Cary couldn’t.

The renovation of the Morrisville Aquatics & Fitness Center (MAFC) is finally happening.  And included in that renovation are two new indoor pools!  While it’s not Cary, Morrisville is close enough to be exciting news and certainly helps ease some of year round lane shortage in Cary.

The MAFC will close on Friday, November 16. The facility will be closed for about a year and is scheduled to reopen in late 2019.  When it does, gone will be the bubbled 4 lane pool, replaced by a new 6-lane lap pool and separate play pool.  The new year-round natatorium will be constructed with a retractable roof to allow for open-air use in the warmer months.  So that’s pretty awesome.

The only sad news is the pool has gone from a planned 8 lanes down to 6.  I’m sure cost constraints played a large factor in that revision.  Still 6 is better than the previous 4 lanes and infinitely better than anything Town of Cary has provided residents.

The Taylor YMCA in Cary finally posted something about their new aquatic center project.  And by something, I mean very little.  They never responded to email inquiries about the project either.  The few details can be found here:

TAYLOR FAMILY YMCA AQUATIC CENTER

Not much more than what we already knew.  8 lane “cool water” pool (their words) and a 4 lane warm water pool that wasn’t pictured in the plans pulled from the Town of Cary site.  Hopefully this means they’re actually moving forward with the project and will publicize it more in the near future.

It was nice that they included, “currently, the Taylor Y cannot meet the year-round aquatic needs for the growing community.”  I wish Town of Cary also recognized this and would help do something about it.

Is the Cary Family YMCA building a new indoor pool?  Well while the Cary Family YMCA hasn’t posted anything and there haven’t been any news articles about it, the Town of Cary development site has a plan submission for a new indoor pool.  The Cary Family YMCA currently bubbles their big pool during the winter.  However, as everyone knows, that’s not a great solution for indoor swimming.  The proposed new pool is housed within a new permanent structure attached to the existing YMCA.  Design documents show an 8 lane x  25 yard pool wide enough to have lane ropes between the end lanes and the wall.  I emailed the YMCA but haven’t received a response back confirming the project or timeline.  Town of Cary Project Number: 16-SP-087

Not sure how I missed this back in November, but Morrisville has revised its strategy for upgrading the aquatic center.  Given the current upgrade efforts are $1M+ over the available funding, Morrisville is now looking at covering the upgraded pool with a permanent vinyl or glass-paneled dome.  Still 8 lanes, no change there, just a reduction in the cost of the structure to fit within the funding.

Certainly not ideal, but hey – at least Morrisville is trying to make this work.  I still can’t believe they haven’t found a partner to help offset the funding short fall.  A local swim team, the Town of Cary, some group has to be able to help them make up the difference.

More details here:
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/community/cary-news/article115152398.html

Longtime Cary Town Manager Ben Shivar retired late last year.  Now after a lengthy search, Town of Cary has selected Sean Stegall, city manager of Elgin, Illinois, as his replacement.  Of obvious importance to this site, “does he like pools?”  Well the US Masters Swim site returned no results for “Stegall” for any race.  So maybe not a best case scenario hire.  But all is not lost.  A quick perusal of the Elgin website revealed that lovely Eglin has three city provided aquatic centers.  Three! That’s amazing!  Eglin is only 70% the size of Cary and has a median household income much less than Cary – yet, Eglin still recognized the importance of providing adequate public aquatic resources to their citizens.

Mr. Stegall starts work in Cary on August 4th.  Guess who his first email will be from?  I encourage you to do the same.

According to the News and Observer, Marlins of Raleigh (MOR) is considering the purchase of the River Rock Swim Club. The plan would convert the seasonal outdoor pool at River Rock Swim Club to a covered year round facility capable of supporting the MOR team. Something similar was done in 2015 at the Cary Swim Club.

It’s always encouraging to see additional USA Swimming opportunities in Cary – I just wish it was farther west to support the under served area around NC 55.  It would be amazing if they’d consider partnering with Morrisville on the Morrisville Aquatics and Fitness Center renovations.

Marlins of Raleigh swim team may expand to Cary

Almost a year after the town council was presented with Morrisville Aquatic and Fitness Center renovation options, finally an update! If you recall, in March 2015 Morrisville was presented with renovation options that were all well above the 2012 bond funding. The lowest cost renovation option was $6.5 million and the 2012 bond was approved at $5.7 million – $4 million of which was marked for the aquatic center. So Morrisville said they’d seek private partners to help cover the gap.

Now, almost a year later, it appears Morrisville didn’t find any partners. At the February 2016 town council meeting, a lower cost renovation option was presented. This one comes in at just under $5.7 million. It appears the original $1.7 million in the bond intended for Morrisville Community Park will now also go to the aquatic center (hey – no argument here).

But still no definite movement. Mayor pro-tem Steve Rao said a final decision on the aquatic center renovation plan could occur in the spring. The “could” is a bit worrisome given the “speed” of this project so far. Rao then said that even if they did approve the plan, the start of the renovation was still at least a year or two away. Not encouraging.

I’ve said this once before and I’ll say it again. Morrisville and Cary should partner on these renovations. The location of the pool is so close to Cary it’s almost in Cary. The proximity to NW Cary fills a huge aquatics needs that’s completely underserved now. Cary could contribute the funds required to make this the kind of facility it needs to be and then both Cary and Morrisville would have an amazing facility to use. My fear now is that Morrisville is so concerned with cost that they’ll build another completely inadequate pool (like the one they have now).

Morrisville considers less expensive renovations for aquatic and fitness center

Over Christmas break I had a chance to head over to the Triangle Aquatic Center (TAC) for some lap swimming.  It’s a 20 minute drive from my house but I was off work and I like seeing other pools to break up the routine.  While there, I noticed that a high school team was practicing.  Some of the swimmers had PC swim caps.  I approached the coach and verified that this was the Panther Creek swim team.  The high school is just down the street from me.  I asked the coach, “Is this your normal practice pool – that’s quite a drive?”  The coach confirmed it is their practice pool and it is quite a drive.

That got me thinking about what a waste of time it is drive 40 minutes round trip each day from the school to swim practice.  The drive alone is probably close to 50% of their water time.  When I got home, I mapped the other west Cary high schools: Green Hope and Green Level.  They also have 20 minute drives to practice at the TAC.

If this isn’t a case for a decent pool in west Cary, I don’t know what is.  Town of Cary will of course point out that schools and school programs are Wake Co business and not Town of Cary.  But most of the kids that attend these schools are Cary residents.  And it’s their quality of life that’s suffering through 40 min daily commutes to the pool.  So please Town of Cary, for the kids, let’s build a pool in west Cary.

While I may not agree with everything the Mayor does, I do like that he’s religious about detailed weekly blog entries.  Among other things, he always lists what emails he’s received from citizens (I’ve been listed before).  This week I noticed the following:

A request for a public swimming pool

YES!  Someone else cared enough to email the Mayor about this.  Now I’m sure Harold responded that it’s in the parks and rec plan but pools are expensive and how wonderful it is to live in Cary where we have the lowest tax rate in Wake Co, blah, blah, blah.

Anyway, the full post can be found here. I also encourage you to email Harold (Harold.Weinbrecht@townofcary.org) and request a pool. The response will be fairly predictable but the Mayor (as well as the Town Council) need to hear repeatedly that a pool is a priority.