There are plenty of under used municipal and school pools across the country that could be bought or managed by an outside organization, just for the promise of occasional public access. USMS is not loaded with money, but has lots of knowledge and experienced people who could pull off a stunt like this. One club in Indiana has done just this thing by taking over a county pool that was in peril of closing because it could not afford to operate it. As far as I know, the agreement is still in force and the USMS club is still paying for operations by its own management and programming.
San Diego has three public pools but cannot afford to keep them all open at once, so they have one or two open and close the other one (or two) on a rotating basis. Not a good way to keep programs filled.
Parents
Former Member
If you can replicate a situation such as that of the location in Indiana that you mentioned, then I suppose it is possible. But as has already been mentioned here, I think it'll take a nearly around the clock usage of the pool, billable usage, to make things work. Even without capital costs, pools are incredibly expensive to operate.
Anyway, this seems like a situation where USMS needs to do some research, talk to some cities/counties/school districts/etc that might be looking for somebody to assume their management and operation, and then run the numbers on how feasible it might be. Until you have some numbers and a proposed budget for a facility being considered, it's all just a bunch of speculation.
If you can replicate a situation such as that of the location in Indiana that you mentioned, then I suppose it is possible. But as has already been mentioned here, I think it'll take a nearly around the clock usage of the pool, billable usage, to make things work. Even without capital costs, pools are incredibly expensive to operate.
Anyway, this seems like a situation where USMS needs to do some research, talk to some cities/counties/school districts/etc that might be looking for somebody to assume their management and operation, and then run the numbers on how feasible it might be. Until you have some numbers and a proposed budget for a facility being considered, it's all just a bunch of speculation.
