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.
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.
Many facility owners do not even consider that anyone on the outside would try to manage or buy a facility. USMS, if it decides to try, would have to approach pools that are known to have troubles- for whatever reason. If the reason is mismanagement or short sighted programming, we might have a match.
First, the BoD needs to decide that it wants to go this direction. Probably not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. This project would need a lot of ushering and vision. The upside would be remarkable.
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.
Many facility owners do not even consider that anyone on the outside would try to manage or buy a facility. USMS, if it decides to try, would have to approach pools that are known to have troubles- for whatever reason. If the reason is mismanagement or short sighted programming, we might have a match.
First, the BoD needs to decide that it wants to go this direction. Probably not going to happen anytime soon, if ever. This project would need a lot of ushering and vision. The upside would be remarkable.
