Cary Needs a Pool

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.

This weekend the family and I visited the Homestead Aquatic Center in Chapel Hill.  I view the Homestead Aquatic Center as possibly the best example of a smaller aquatic center that serves the community tremendously well.  Here’s why:

• Lap pool is a perfect size at 25 yards by 25 meters.  It’s depth is at most 9 feet and it’s shallow end is 4 feet.  This is the perfect size for swim practice, high school swim meets, and small USA Swimming meets.
• Deck Space is just enough for swim meets without being so big that it becomes an unnecessary cost.
• Instead of just building one pool, Chapel Hill had the foresight to build a second pool beside the lap pool for: kids, learn to swim, water aerobics, therapy, etc.  The pool has a large zero entry ramp perfect for kids not ready to explore the deep and others with accessibility needs.  The rest of the pool varies from a depth of 0 to 6 feet.
• Pool temperature is perfect.  Because the center has 2 pools, the lap/competition pool is at the correct temperature for swimming.  This is never the case at centers with just one pool because they have to accommodate other uses that require a higher temperature.  But Homestead has the second pool, and they keep it at a much higher temperature for the kids/water aerobics crowd.  So I was happy there, my kids were happy there, a win-win situation.
• The rest of the facility was just about perfect in size.  Reasonable locker rooms, some office space, a few multiple purpose rooms for meetings / gatherings.

The total cost for the facility was $6.5 million in 2009.  So in today’s dollars, roughly $7.2 million.  I mention these numbers because just last week the Town of Cary approved a downtown parking garage for $9.35 million (Town of Cary will pay $8.35 million).  That’s right, an almost 10 million dollar parking garage.  So while downtown Cary continues to be a money pit, the rest of Cary continues to do without amenities that could easily be met with less money than what’s being spent on downtown.  It’s frustrating to see such warped priorities.

Crosspointe Church is building a new fitness facility in NW Cary which will be leased and operated by the YMCA.  That’s pretty awesome and should serve as an excellent example of how organizations can partner to provide amenities.  Town of Cary should take note and be more active in seeking these partnerships in order to more rapidly provide its residents recreational amenities.

So that’s the good news.  The bad news is the pool that is planned for the facility – a single outdoor 6 lane pool.  While a pool is better than no pool, it’s really only barely better than no pool.  Here’s why:

• Outdoor pools can only be used a third of the year.  Why limit swimming to 4 months out of the year?
• Outdoor pools only support summer league teams and do nothing to alleviate the need for USA Swimming team space in the area.  Why ignore such a pressing need?
• A single pool drastically constrains aquatic offerings.  No single pool can adequately accommodate learn to swim, water aerobics, swim team, therapy, etc.  In fact, no modern aquatics plan ever advocates a single pool.  So why build such a pool?
• The anticipated users of the pool all have community outdoor pools of similar size or bigger (Cameron Pond, Weycroft, Cary Park, Amberly, Greystone, Hilliard Forest, Copperleaf, Carpenter Village, Highcroft, Weldon Ridge).  Why duplicate what is already readily available?

So while what Crosspointe and the YMCA are doing for the community is great – they’ve completely missed the boat with the pool.  It’s a blown opportunity for aquatics needs in NW Cary and should leave people asking, “WHY?”.

Why Project Ground Breaking

Is it 2017 already?  Town of Cary plans early and they’re accepting feedback for fiscal year 2017 until October 31, 2015.  So please submit feedback – especially if that feedback is “Cary Needs a Pool”.

Press Release

E-Mail the Town

Yesterday Cary Town Council approved a $4.3 million dollar award for a new downtown park. The park has a pretty big fountain. That’s almost like a pool.

Never mind the fact that for $4.3 million you could actually get a pool. I’m sure the park will be great too.

I travel a lot and always appreciate cities that provide great aquatics options. Makes me wish Town of Cary did more to support swimming. Hopefully someday they will. One of the things I like to do is track where I swim. I’ve added a new page to the site to do just that – My Swims. I’ll update the page each time I check off a new state where I haven’t swum before. I didn’t start tracking swims until I became a Masters Swimmer – so I haven’t included pools I visited long ago as an age group swimmer.

One of the many downsides to not having a municipal pool in Cary is the higher cost to swim at pools provided by other organizations.  Unlike municipal pools, many of these organizations don’t even offer daily swim passes.  Instead they require you to be a monthly member – often with an initiation fee.  Of the pools in Cary, only three offer day passes: UNC Wellness at $10, Rex Wellness at $10, and Triangle Aquatic Center at $7.  That makes the average daily swim rate in Cary $9.  Compared with the municipal pools from the surrounding communities, Cary is more than twice as expensive.

Pool Daily Admission Rate

It’s actually cheaper to drive outside of Cary to another city’s pool and swim at their non-resident rate (except for Durham at $9 for non-residents).  So while Cary likes to brag about their lowest tax rate in the area, they fail to mention it comes at the cost of fewer municipal services and resources.  While this may not be a big burden for certain demographics of Cary, it does present a large barrier to entry for many others.  In doing so, access to pools is restricted, fewer people learn to swim and/or enjoy the many health benefits of swimming.

Back in the mid 2000s, Town of Cary was actively considering an aquatics center.  It even had an official tracking number, name, and $10 million+ budget line – PR1080 Aquatic Facility. There were meetings about the facility and much debate about the size, scope, and location of the project.  However by January 2008 the planning had stalled and the Town Council requested staff look for additional locations for the PR1080 Aquatic Facility in the north Cary and the downtown Cary area. Town Council also requested staff to develop additional program alternatives.

Then things went pretty quiet.  In December 2009 the project was unceremoniously put in “Delay” status. Later in 2011 funding was reduced to $13,474,200. Finally in the 2013 budget, the PR1080 Aquatics Center project was marked as closed.  Why was it closed?  No clue.  Searching the Town of Cary website usually returns some useful results.  But I can’t find anything about why it was removed from the budget.  I even asked Mayor Weinbrecht where it went but all he could provide was, “I do believe an aquatics center is part of the Parks Master Plan.”  Sure, the plan mentions aquatics facilities (it mentions lots of nice things we might someday get) but it doesn’t address where the PR1080 Aquatic Facility project went and where all the budgeted money went.

Then this week I found something quite interesting.  A blog post from Don Frantz announcing his bid for re-election mentioned the pool.

I championed the redevelopment of Cary Elementary into The Cary Arts Center which we paid for with cash that a previous council had earmarked for a pool.

So that’s where the money went.  But why on earth is there nothing on the Town of Cary website about this?  I’ve searched meeting minutes, Town Council agendas, staff recommendations, budget documents, etc and I couldn’t find anything. But thanks to Don’s blog post, it’s finally public where the aquatics center project money went.  And to be clear, I have nothing against the Cary Arts Center – I just wish there had been more public discussion about where the funding for the Arts Center was coming from and what was being sacrificed to achieve it.