The Hub Is Open. Here's When Redmond Can Actually Get a Lane.

The Hub's lap pool has eight lanes. Who has them at 4 p.m. on a Monday? Most weeks it isn't the drop-in lap swimmer.

The Redmond Area Park and Recreation District opened The Hub Aquatic and Recreation Center at 3515 SW Lava Ave on Sept. 17 and held the ribbon cutting on Oct. 3. It's a 56,000-square-foot building with a 25-meter, eight-lane lap pool, a leisure pool with a current channel, a water slide and a hot tub, plus a fitness center, two group fitness rooms and a gym ringed by a walking track. RAPRD's drop-in rules don't let members claim space ahead of anyone else. That makes the building's daily calendar matter more than which pass is in your wallet.

The pool got bigger. The after-school crunch moved with it.

The Hub replaces the Cascade Swim Center next to Redmond High School. That pool dates to the late 1970s, when Redmond had about 6,000 residents. RAPRD executive director Katie Hammer described its main limit to Your Oregon News: "When we have a fitness class, a water fitness class, we have sometimes 40 or 50 people in there and it takes up the whole pool and so then the lap swimmers can't swim during those times."

The new building has two separate pools, so a water fitness class and a lap swimmer no longer compete for the same water. The late-afternoon hours are still contested, though. On the live calendar for the week of Oct. 19, the lap pool looks like this:

On those two days, the lap pool has no open lanes between 3 and 6 p.m. The good windows are dawn, the long midday stretch, and the evening, which on Mondays shrinks to the last 50 minutes before closing. The calendar is built day by day, so check the current schedule before you drive over. The pattern above shows how the week is shaped. It isn't a fixed timetable.

Where the open hours sit, space by space

The Hub posts its hours as 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Saturday and 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Sunday. Entry stops 15 minutes before closing, and RAPRD says hours may change with program needs and attendance. Some opening-week news stories gave an 8 p.m. weekday close. The district's own page and its 9 p.m. evening blocks show the later time.

The other spaces each have their own rhythm, and it rarely matches the lap pool's.

• Leisure pool. The leisure pool has a three-foot section connected to a lazy river, a hot tub and a separate slide. Before opening, the plan was for the water to be 86 degrees, according to Central Oregon Daily. On Oct. 17 and 18, recreation swim ran 1 to 5 p.m. in both pools. On Tuesday, Oct. 20, the leisure pool had recreation swim from 6:10 to 8 p.m. Weekend afternoons are the one time both pools open to general swimming together.
• Gym. Drop-in basketball on Monday, Oct. 19 ran 5 to 8 a.m., noon to 4:30 p.m. and 7:30 to 9 p.m. Tuesday had 5 to 8 a.m. and 1 to 9 p.m. The after-school hours that are closed in the lap pool are open on the court. Sports coordinator Chris Davis told the Redmond Spokesman he'd seen kids dropped off right after school to play basketball. He also said The Hub's open gym is the only one in Central Oregon run by a park and recreation district.
• Walking track. On Oct. 19, 20 and 21, the calendar set aside 8 to 10 a.m. as "Walking Track Only." It begins right after the 5 to 8 a.m. basketball block ends, so the court goes first in the morning and the track follows.
• Child Watch. Supervised care for ages 6 months to 6 years runs weekdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 4 to 7 p.m. It costs $5, with a 90-minute limit per visit.

That last item connects to everything above it. The morning Child Watch window overlaps the midday lap swim block, so a parent can swim laps then. The evening window opens at 4 p.m., and on the October calendar that hour belongs to RACE. A parent arriving at 4:30 with a toddler will find the weight room, a fitness class or the track open, and the lap lanes taken.

A pass buys a lower price per visit, not a place in line

RAPRD spells out how drop-in programs work. Open swim, lap swim, open gym and fitness classes admit people first-come, first-served, whether they paid at the desk or hold a membership. When a space hits capacity, staff let more people in only as others leave. Members get no priority. What membership does provide, in RAPRD's words, is unlimited access and discounted use.

So choosing a pass is just a math question. Here are the adult rates for people who live inside the district:

The $624 annual pass costs the same as eight 30-day passes at $78 each. If you'd realistically buy a monthly pass in at least eight of the next 12 months, the annual pass comes out ahead. If you swim hard through winter and spend summer outside, monthly passes cover that. Household rates follow the same pattern: $156 for 30 days and $1,248 for the year, again eight months' worth. A household pass covers up to six people living at the same address. A $24 household drop-in for the same group starts to make sense once the family comes more than six times in a month.

Some fine print changes the math. Daily admission gets you one visit with no reentry. Registration-based programs aren't included in admission or memberships, so lessons and leagues cost extra no matter which pass you hold. Seniors 60 and older pay $6 to drop in and $58 for 30 days. Children ages 18 months to 15 pay $5 and $49.

Address matters too. RAPRD serves Redmond, Terrebonne and Tumalo and posts a district boundary map. Its registration policy sets fees for people outside the boundary 30% higher, because they don't contribute through district property taxes. That puts an out-of-district adult at $10.50 a visit and $101.50 for 30 days. The building exists because district voters narrowly passed a $49 million bond in November 2022, and Hammer told Central Oregon Daily that the resident discount is meant as a thank-you for that vote.

What November adds to the calendar, and what's still under construction

More registered programs start in late fall, and they claim more of those late-afternoon hours. The Redmond Aquatic Academy for ages 6 to 11 runs leisure-pool lesson sessions at 5 and 5:35 p.m., with blocks starting Oct. 26 and Oct. 27 and more running through December. Fees are $70 resident and $91 nonresident for Monday and Wednesday, or $63 and $82 for Tuesday and Thursday. Youth and adult lessons in the lap pool meet Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5 p.m. from Oct. 27 to Nov. 24, then Dec. 1 to Dec. 31, at $63 resident and $82 nonresident. Springboard diving for ages 9 to 16 takes the lap pool on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5 to 6 p.m., in sessions starting Nov. 2, Nov. 16, Nov. 30 and Dec. 14.

Indoors, the class list includes fitness programs and Kendo, the Japanese martial art of fencing. Basketball, volleyball, indoor soccer and pickleball leagues are also planned, plus a futsal run.

Outside, the building isn't finished. The turf field, the pickleball courts and the park area are still under construction. Davis told the Spokesman the goal is to finish them by the end of the year. At that point, RAPRD's soccer leagues would move to The Hub from the High Desert Sports Complex. Central Oregon Daily's opening-week report described the outdoor area, with turf soccer fields, more pickleball courts and age-separated playgrounds, as a spring project. Until RAPRD sets a firm date, treat the outdoor phase as somewhere between late December and spring.

The old pool's future is also open. In September, the Redmond School District had no plans for the Cascade Swim Center, and whether the building would be torn down was still unclear. For now, the corner next to Redmond High School is the building to watch.

The difference between $8 and $10.50 at The Hub's front desk depends on which side of the RAPRD boundary your address falls on, and that boundary covers Redmond, Terrebonne and Tumalo. If you're thinking about a move within the area and want to know whether a property sits inside the district, Brent Krebs can check before you make an offer. Schedule a consultation and bring the addresses.