Pool keeping its head above water
North End Swim Club in Pottstown sees membership up, offers half-season memberships for $150
Things are looking up for the North End Swim Club, but it’s not out of the woods yet.
Although a GoFundMe campaign launched in January failed to reach its $20,000 goal, the private pool club seems to have amassed enough cash to get through the season.
But it’s still not set for longterm financial stability, said Debbie Bumbaugh, a member of the board of directors and the entertainment and recreation director for the summer.
“I think this year we’re going to be OK,” said Bumbaugh, who helped organize a number of ways to pump money into the pool that first opened 57 years ago.
Membership is up from 239 to 255 families, but that by itself won’t do it.
It costs $200,000 a year to operate the pool and 255 families paying the $450 annual fee still leaves the pool far short of its operating budget, she explained.
That budget is higher because “in the 70s, and the 80s and 90s, we had a corps of retired people like plumbers, electricians, pipe-fitters, who could do the repair and maintenance work. Now we have to pay to have all those things done,” Bumbaugh said.
So North End is supplementing its revenue stream with business sponsorships, an effort begun in February.
“That went very well. We got 31 sponsorships from local businesses,” Bumbaugh said pointing to the signs along the fence that surrounds the seven-acre property.
“We’re also doing a $10 raffle and the top seller gets a free membership next year. We’re hoping that nets us $10,000,” she said. (Raffle prizes include $500 to $100 cash.)
“We’re also selling Mike’s Brick Oven Pizza coupons. I know, nobody likes to fundraise, but we need the money,” Bumbaugh said.
Another valued revenue stream is making the pool available to outside groups — and there are a lot of them.
“Both Pottsgrove and Pottstown parks and recreation use the pool, as well as the Olivet
Boys and Girls Club, two church groups and even the Creative Moments Pre-School in Gilbertsville and the summer program at the Wyndcroft School,” she said.
“We even get the Pottstown High School Football team in here at the end of their summer camp as a reward, that’s a fun day,” she said with a laugh.
The additional benefit of allowing the outside groups in is it also works as outreach, giving the pool more exposure to families who might not otherwise know about the facility.
“We had several families from within walking distance join this year after we started an outreach effort. A lot of them thought this was part of Brookside Country Club,” whose entrance is across North Adams Street from the pool entrance, Bumbaugh said.
And the pool membership is now considering offering different kinds of memberships, “tiered memberships” to allow those who can’t afford or don’t want a full family membership to join the ranks.
Another outreach effort is a special half-season offer. Families who want to “try out” the pool can join for $150 “for the rest of the season, which traditionally ends around Labor Day.
If you want to check out the facility but don’t want a half-season membership, North End also holds special events for families and specific age groups which are open to the public. The schedule is posted in the pool web site — http:// northendswim.wixsite.com/ northend
There are teen nights, pre-teen nights, adult nights, and family movie nights, all of which are open to the public for $5 and to members for $3.
Sandie Greco and her Lower Pottsgrove family joined two years ago and does not regret it for a moment.
“The kids have so much fun here,” she said after her 4-year-old son Alphonso had run up to give Bumbaugh a hug.
“We’re here from 8 in the morning until 8 at night. It’s a family,” said Greco. “And you can’t put a price on that.”
Bobby Burkhart couldn’t agree more.
A 2012 graduate of Germantown Academy, Burkhart spent much of his childhood at North End Swim Club. Now he is the manager at North End.
“We were one of the strong families here. I was always a swimmer and I had my crew of friends here,” said Burkhart, who graduated recently from Lebanon Valley College with a degree in elementary and special education.
“I would ride down on my bike in the morning for swim team, ride home for lunch and then I would be here through dinner. Every day,” Burkhart said. “We always had a safe place where we could go and play.”
Both his parents worked, but by 12 years old, they knew where he would be. “We joke now that we are the cheapest childcare around,” Burkhart said.
When he was 15 Burkhart got a job as a lifeguard “and I got paid to come and be where I wanted to be anyway.”
But things have changed in the last 10 years.
When Bumbaugh left the area in 2002, “and we had 400-plus families here and a waiting list to get in.”
When she was a member 10 years ago, Bumbaugh worked at Pottstown Memorial Medical Center and her husband worked second shift at Doehler-Jarvis. Their over-lapping schedules allowed their children to spend all day at the pool, with one parent dropping off and another picking up.
But parents are busier now and work farther away from home — homes in subdivisions and that more and more often, have their own pools.
Burkhart said the pool starts to lose children’s interest when they get to middle school and high school age. Add in video games, pools in the backyard and an uncertain economy and you get a struggling pool club, he said.
But there was no mistaking 10-year-old Isabella Pryor’s enthusiasm for the pool.
There with a group from the Pottstown Parks and Recreation summer camp, she said “I like it here. It’s fun because I’m not cooped up in the gym all day.”
Laderah Reinhart has been a counselor with the parks program since she was 16 and she says the program comes to the pool on Tuesdays and Thursdays “and nobody misses that day. They’re usually in gym or out in the sun most of the day, so they love coming here and cooling off.”
Even an 11-year-old child with ADHD, whose name was withheld by his counselor, “behaves a lot better here,” said Angelina Privitera, who is a therapeutic emotional support staffer with the program.
“He loves it here,” she said.