South Boulder Recreation Center Facility Repairs

South Boulder Recreation Center is an important part of our community and we have no plans to close it. The current building is approaching the end of its operational life cycle and the city is in the early stages of planning for the future of all three of our recreation centers

Right now, we are exploring creative financial solutions to fund rec center renovations. Those results will determine the next steps and timing for future recreation center plans in 2024 and beyond. We’re just getting started in this process.

If you haven't already, visit our “Future of Recreation Centers” webpage to learn about the project, sign up for email updates, and to fill out that project’s questionnaire, which is open through June 2.

In the meantime, we’re doing everything we can to keep SBRC operational so it can meet a level of service for our community, such as investing in the new gymnasium floor, the new community room, and the new ninja studio.

We understand our community’s frustration about SBRC’s pool availability, and we share them. We have the pool closed now as we continue to troubleshoot, find and address multiple pool leaks. During this process we have found multiple leaks in the pool plumbing. We’ll keep working on it and keep you updated. We will do our best to open the pool given staffing and operational limitations. Thanks for your understanding as we do our best to restore pool services.

To reiterate, we are not planning to close SBRC. Thanks for being a part of the SBRC community!

We are making progress on troubleshooting pool leaks and are still working on them. We're getting closer! We hope to have the pool and hot tub up and running soon. Thanks for your patience.

In addition to making repairs at South Boulder Recreation Center, we are planning for the long-term health of all three recreation center buildings.

If you are interested in receiving updates about the Future of Recreation Centers project, please sign up for the project email list.

Boulder’s three recreation centers are aging. To renovate and keep them in good shape for the long-term for our community, they will need significant investment in the near future.

Help us imagine the future of these buildings and our high-quality recreation system. We are working with our partners in the Facilities and Fleet Department as we start planning for the indoor spaces and the recreation center buildings themselves.

Please visit us in the lobby of each rec center at the following times to provide your feedback to us about what you like and your concerns about our recreation centers:

• EBCC – Wednesday, April 12 from 4:30-6 p.m.
• SBRC – Wednesday, April 19 from 10-11:30 a.m.
• NBRC – Wednesday, April 26 from 4:30-6 p.m.

South Boulder Recreation Center's pool and hot tub are currently closed while we investigate water leaks. We are troubleshooting and solving the issue as we work to make SBRC's pool available to our community again.

SBRC will have its annual facility shutdown from Saturday, March 25 through Sunday, April 2 to give the facility a deep cleaning and perform some needed maintenance.

We are tentatively planning to have the pool reopen after the facility shutdown, but please follow our social media for the latest updates.

South Boulder Recreation Center's pool and hot tub are closed due to a water leak. We hope to reopen the pool area by mid-March, but will keep you updated.

The pools at North Boulder Recreation Center and East Boulder Community Center are still open for your swimming needs!

Check out our pool operations schedule at bouldercolorado.gov/aquatics-and-facility-status.

Like a phoenix reborn, the former Downstairs Pilates Studio is now the Community Lounge and is ready to fly!

The Community Lounge boasts amenities like a foosball table, ping pong table, Expresso virtual exercise bike with games and programming, a 65” smart TV with a retro video game console connected, board games, foam ax throwing, and various seating in lounge chairs, a sofa, and a cafeteria-style table.

The lounge comfortably fits about 20.

• Read more about the Community Lounge

The rec center’s former racquetball room has also undergone a facelift and is now a ninja studio! The space includes obstacles to climb on, jump over, and hang onto for community members to tap into their inner ninja.

Community members can reserve the space and check out a key from the front desk to use the ninja studio. In addition, we will soon be starting classes for little ninjas, as we are currently accepting applications for Ninja Instructors.

The pool at South Boulder Recreation Center will be ready to go on Tuesday, Jan. 10! After lots of maintenance work at the facility to take care of leaks, we were ready to reopen it to our community…and we did for a little bit!

Unfortunately, a pool pump failure caused us to close it again. However, thanks to the proactive planning by our aquatics staff, the closure was relatively short, the pool pump is now installed, and the pool will be open to our community and swim groups starting Tuesday, Jan. 10.

• Check out our pool schedule for the latest updates

We can’t wait for you to come swim some laps and enjoy the hot tub again at SBRC!

With the pool at South Boulder Recreation Center closed while we wait for a new pump, we’re not idly sitting by. Our excellent aquatics staff grabbed bottles of hydrochloric acid and set about cleaning the deepest part of the pool.

When the pool sat dormant during maintenance for a leak, sediment that was trapped in the pipes flowed out when we started refilling it. That sediment then settled in the grit of the pool’s bottom and temporarily stained it. After three acid washings, it looks much better!

The replacement pump is scheduled to be installed and the pool will be ready for our community to swim in again next month.

We were excited for the pool to be open and are glad many of our community members have been able to enjoy it again. However, the pool pump has failed and we have had to close the pool and hot tub. A replacement pump should be installed by about mid-January.

For our downstairs areas under construction, contractors have completed all wall repairs and have painted in the old racquetball room, which will be our new ninja studio. We will soon install acoustic panels in the room to minimize the echo of the large open space.

Once that room is ready, we will move the ninja equipment that is currently staged in the community lounge to the ninja studio. Then we can finalize the space and, hopefully, open the community lounge by the end of the year.

Thanks for your patience as we work to reopen all our amenities soon!

Work is nearing completion on the pool and we’re very excited for our community to come swim at SBRC again. We are planning for the pool construction to be complete and to reopen it the week of October 17.

As you may know, we are still in the midst of a nationwide lifeguard shortage. Due to this, when the pool opens, we are not anticipating it being available for open swim during the daytime. We are still figuring out what the lap lane availability will be.

We are currently planning to have two lap lanes open on weeknights when possible and swim times on Sunday. The lap pool will continue to be available exclusively to school user groups during the swim season. We will let our community know what the hours will be going forward.

Please check out the Google spreadsheet of our aquatics schedule, which is updated weekly on the weekends, for the latest swim hours of operation.

Anyone interested in becoming a lifeguard at SBRC or at our other recreation centers can apply at BPRjobs.org.

Lines for volleyball, badminton, pickleball, and basketball have been painted on the new gymnasium floor. The space is ready for community use! Join us for lots of activities, like drop-in basketball, and enjoy the new gym floor.

We recently learned that the basketball lines were painted incorrectly and the gymnasium floor may be closed from Sunday, Oct. 16-Tuesday, Oct. 18 for repainting. Follow us on Twitter for any construction updates.

Work continues on the pool and pool deck. We are still planning for the pool to be ready to go by the end of October/beginning of November.

Equipment for the ninja obstacle room is currently stored in the community room. So, once the pool is ready and we see that there are no additional leaks, we will move the equipment into the ninja obstacle room and open it and the community room.

Thanks for your patience as we work to cross the finish line and have SBRC fully reopened to our community!

The new gymnasium floor has been installed! Court lines will be painted the first week of October and we anticipate opening the gym to community use on Wednesday, Oct. 5. In addition, starting the first week of October, SRBC will be open until 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday! We’ll also be open Sundays from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. depending on staff availability and community demand. We will continue to evaluate SBRC’s operating hours and update them as needed.

All pool leak repairs have been completed and the pool deck has been removed. Contractors are now replacing the concrete and will start filling the pool and installing the pool deck. The pool should be ready to go by the end of October/beginning of November.

The studio room is being converted to a new community room and will be a fun space for birthday parties, meetings, and for teens to drop-in and hang out. In addition, in the old racquetball court, a new ninja obstacle course room will be installed! Both the new community room and ninja obstacle room should be ready in November.

We’re excited to provide additional services soon for community members of all ages with lap and family swim times, open gym and structured play, and new spaces for programming and community celebrations.

A big thanks to city staff and our community as we adjusted operations, organized projects, and got our facilities some necessary maintenance.

As work is finalized and facility spaces reopened, we plan to hold reopening celebrations.

Come on in and see what’s new at SBRC!

Construction is happening fast at South Boulder Recreation Center! The new floor is being installed and painted in the gymnasium and racquetball court areas.

Our current plan is to open the gymnasium for classes and drop-in activities the first week of October and increase the amount of available hours for SBRC.

We'll post more information about these plans when we have them.

We're making progress! Gymnasium floor materials are on-site and floor preparation is underway with installation happening soon.

All pool leak repairs have been completed and the pool deck has been removed. Contractors are planning to start replacing the concrete the week of Sept. 21.

Thanks for your patience as we work on these two repairs simultaneously.

Pool leak repairs are still underway, and we hope to have them completed with the pool reopened by October. Although, thanks to the rain this summer, we’ve discovered a new leak in the building. We’re working to repair it before we install the new gymnasium floor.

We’ve picked out the flooring we’re going to install, which is a multi-sport floor that is designated for use in competitive sports.

The flooring is a "class 3" sports floor with a medium amount of shock absorption. It's designed as a no slip/no skid/no burn floor and will play like a wooden basketball court.

We’re planning to install this floor sometime in August, pending the pool repair progress and building leak repair status.

Pool leak repairs have begun. The initial pool leak was identified and repaired, but during testing a leak in an adjacent drain pipe was identified. The construction crew is excavating the area to review the severity of that break.

The pool leaks have elevated the moisture levels in the gymnasium, so we will fix these leaks before the new gym floor can be installed.

The flooring has been successfully removed! The next phase of the work for the project is to install a new flooring system. The new flooring system for the gymnasium and satellite rooms takes into consideration all the different ways the floor is used and who uses it. This includes:

• Basketball
• Volleyball
• Pickleball
• Tennis
• Badminton
• Group Fitness (which uses up to 35-pound dumbbells)
• Multi-purpose uses, including chairs and tables on the floor

The city has put out a Request for Bid (RFB) for the flooring system installation with responses due on April 29. A contractor will be selected shortly after bids are received and evaluated.

The floor replacement work is expected to begin in mid-June when the Facilities Department has completed moisture mitigation work from the pool.

The timeframe for the completion of the floor replacement project will be coordinated with the selected contractor.

The water-damaged floor has been successfully removed from the Pilates room, gymnasium, and racquetball court. Thanks for your patience as we have started this project and kept South Boulder Recreation Center open.

We don't know what kind of flooring system will be installed, however we anticipate it will be some type of multi-use, potentially vinyl flooring type, that will meet the facility and community members' needs.

Working with the project's contractors, we hope to have new flooring installed in June.

We are finding a flooring product that can meet the primary needs for the space as a large indoor exercise area and is sensible given the short remaining lifecycle of the building. We are receiving quotes for the removal of the current gym floor.

Construction is scheduled to begin the second week of March, so be aware that there will be noise, dust, and odors from floor cutting activities, in addition to construction traffic on the north side of the recreation center. Construction will last up to two weeks.

We plan to close the pool from late May to early June, when outdoor pools are open, to repair the pool and replace the gym flooring. The gym will remain closed until that time.

• The future of SBRC + email updates