Did You Know Elk Grove Has a Privately-owned 25-meter Competitive Pool?

March 21, 2016 | UPDATED, 8:30 a.m., March 22 |

Those who have lived here long enough will recall that before it occupied its Bond Road facility, California Family Fitness Center operated in the Elk Grove Shopping Center on Elk Grove-Florin Road.

The reason we are referencing this is because a reader sent us pictures today of a new business operating at the site abandoned over 15 years ago by California Fitness. The surprising thing is that the new business operating there, Sunshine Swim and Fitness Center, is not a health club in the classic sense of the word, rather it is a swim club.

Our reader happened on the owner of the facility yesterday and learned, and reminded us, that the Elk Grove-Florin facility has a competitive swimming pool. The pool, our reader was told, is a six lane, 25-meter with a small diving platform and is suitable for high school swim meets.

Our reader was also informed the facility currently is being used by the Cosumnes Oaks High School swim team. Obviously, this one facility will not solve the so-called swimming pool deficit facing Elk Grove, but is does present an opportunity for conversation.

After much talk over the last several years, there has been little new information released regarding The City of Elk Grove's ballyhooed Civic Center Aquatics Facility. Indeed, the facility has been besieged by several problems, most notably a pending lawsuit against its former consultant, P3 International, a design that exceeded budgeted funds, and the failure to find an operator willing to manage the facility.

While the Elk Grove City Council has gone silent on the proposed aquatic center - it is an election year after all - they are equally unlikely to back away from the plans for a variety of political and legal reasons.   

If our City Council cannot find a way to operate the proposed aquatics center without placing onerous Mello Roos fees on property owners, increasing sales taxes, or decides to go ahead and operate the facility with multi-million dollar annual losses, perhaps its viability needs to be reexamined. This privately owned and operated facility will be a good case study.

Given that two of the current City Councilmen are members of the party espousing the small-government, free-market philosophy, perhaps they will have a backbone and take a stand on this in the interests of taxpayers. After all, if there is such an enormous demand in Elk Grove for competitive pools, as we have repeatedly been told, wouldn't private sector operators be best-suited to fulfill that need, make a profit, and free the taxpayer from providing a multi-million dollar subsidy?

Maybe then road maintenance will resume.

UPDATED - Please see video from Sunshine Swim and Fitness Club