Life Time Alston Town Center is finally opening this month. And in a town that’s desperate for lap lanes, any new pool feels like good news. But before we celebrate, it’s worth asking a simple question: what does $250 a month actually get you?

A Lap Pool That Barely Clears the Bar

Life Time’s marketing makes this place sound like an aquatic showpiece. The reality is a lot more modest. They’re advertising an indoor lap pool with six lanes. Six.

For anyone familiar with modern aquatics, that number should immediately raise an eyebrow. Six lanes was standard many decades ago. Today, a pool designed to meet real community demand starts at eight lanes (and often more). Six lanes is the minimum required to call something a lap pool without laughing.

Now picture the morning rush. A handful of Masters swimmers, a few strong lap swimmers, and Northwest Cary residents trying to squeeze in a workout before work. Those lanes are going to feel crowded fast. This is not a facility built to absorb demand. It’s built to meet a marketing requirement.

Here’s the full breakdown:

• Indoor lap pool: 6 lanes
• Indoor teaching pool: a genuinely good addition, since it keeps lessons out of the lap pool
• Outdoor lap pool: 5 lanes (again, just barely clearing the “lap pool” definition)

Nothing here is going to substantially help with Town of Cary aquatic needs.

The Real Issue: Price

The bigger problem isn’t just the lane count. It’s who gets access. At $250 a month, Life Time is not a community resource, it’s a luxury product. That’s $3,000 a year for a single adult. For a family of four with kids over 13? Nearly $4,800 a year.

That price point excludes a lot of Cary residents. And once again, the burden of meeting basic aquatic needs falls to private clubs instead of the town itself. This is Town of Cary’s preferred approach, “Let the private sector handle it.” Instead of building municipal pools, the Town of Cary waits for luxury gyms to open and then points to them as solutions. The message is pretty clear: if you want access to water, you’d better be able to afford it. Meanwhile:

• Morrisville, a much smaller town, builds a municipal aquatic facility
• Durham passes bonds that include meaningful funding for public pools
• Cary shrugs and lets a high-end gym charge residents a fortune for six lanes

This isn’t planning. It’s avoidance.

A Luxury Gym Isn’t an Aquatic Strategy

Life Time Alston Town Center will probably be a nice place to hang out. The gym will be shiny. The smoothies will be good. But as a response to Cary’s long-standing aquatic shortage? It’s not moving the needle.

Town leaders should be embarrassed that in Cary, one of the wealthiest cities in the state, basic access to lap swimming is quietly becoming a luxury reserved for those who can afford a premium monthly fee. Access to water shouldn’t be a status symbol.

The Town of Cary has recently proposed a new bond referendum to fund the development of new recreation centers. While on the surface this sounds like a positive step forward, a closer look reveals a significant issue: the proposed bond does not include plans for ANY aquatic facilities. Details here: https://carybonds.org/

Community Input Ignored

During the planning process for the Mills Park Community Center, the Town of Cary conducted an online survey. An overwhelming 70% of the 2,740 respondents expressed a strong desire for indoor aquatic activities. Despite this clear demand, the current bond proposal completely ignores the need for aquatic components.

Cary Behind Other Triangle Communities

Cary is currently the only town among its Triangle peers—Durham, Chapel Hill, Morrisville, and Raleigh—that lacks municipal aquatic facilities. While neighboring communities offer their residents access to public pools and aquatic centers, Cary’s options are limited to private or non-profit facilities. This gap puts undue strain on families and swimmers, who face long commutes or high membership costs—burdens that not all families can afford.

Addressing Western Cary Needs

Western Cary, in particular, suffers from a severe shortage of lap lanes. Many families are forced to make lengthy trips to the Triangle Aquatic Center (TAC) for practices or swim meets. This inconvenience affects daily life and, in some cases, may even deter families from participating in swimming altogether.

Vote NO

Given the strong community support for aquatic facilities, the exclusion of such amenities from this bond referendum is unacceptable. Approving the bond as it stands means missing a crucial opportunity to address a significant need. With the bond amounting to $500 million, it’s uncertain when Twon of Cary will next have the chance to consider adding aquatic facilities.

Send a clear message to the Town of Cary: Vote NO on November 5th to ensure our community’s needs are met.

If you’ve visited the Town of Cary’s website, you might have gotten the impression that the Triangle Aquatic Center (TAC) is a town-funded and operated facility.

However, that’s far from the truth.

The reality is that the TAC was built by a group of dedicated swim parents and community members who recognized the need for more aquatic facilities in the triangle. They didn’t rely on taxpayer dollars or government help. Instead, through sheer determination and fundraising efforts, they secured land, financing, and eventually opened the doors to one of the best aquatic facilities in the region.

Since then, TAC has received minimal support from the Town of Cary. Yet, the town website seems to imply otherwise, potentially misleading residents about the Town of Cary’s true support for aquatic access within the community. Town of Cary owns and operates many athletic facilities, but let’s be clear, an aquatic center is not one of them.

Don’t be fooled by appearances on the town website. The Triangle Aquatic Center is a testament to community spirit, but it’s not a substitute for a true town-funded facility. It’s time for Cary to step up and provide the aquatic center that augments facilities like the TAC and provides aquatic access to a wider range of citizens.

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

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.