This area make getting into shape hard. There are very few public facilities offering anything for adults, other than pickup basketball. I live in Guilford county and work in Forsyth county, there are 2 public indoor swimming pools between the two! they are both at high schools in Greensboro. Public lap swim is either 5pm-9pm or 7pm-9pm depending on the pool. No mornings, noon... No open family swim time... I went to the pool tonight for 1 hour and I was the only one there!
This is very weird, I grew up in FL and there was always times to go to the pool and always people in it. I moved to Oregon, lap swim starting at 5am and the pool stay open with programs all day until 9 or 10 pm. I've traveled all over the country and found public pools in Chicago and Milwaukee full on winter evening... Even other areas of NC the pools are at least used some.
Swimming is very inaccessible here. The YMCA's have the best facilities and many swim teams rent space from them or have their own private pools. There are summer pools for recreational swimming, but again most are private. Outdoor public pools get great attendance, but plans for new indoor pools are driven by local swim teams competing for space.
These designs meet their needs for lap swimming but ignore providing recreational facilities that draw large crowds in the summers - slides, tubes, fountains, shallow areas for little ones.... I've been in the upper mid-west and the public pools include all of this while having lap swimming and competitive swimming space - and they are packed all winter long.
I would be nice if the area could get together and build many smaller pools where the community would feel welcome to use them in many ways all year long... hopefully its not a pipe dream.
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