Bill Brooks, San Clemente
Since 2009, I’ve been taking a great class called Yoga for the Back. When I started taking the class, it was offered in the upstairs recreation room at the Ole Hanson Beach Club. This was an excellent venue for the class as it was a large, rectangular-shaped room with wooden floors. It had ample natural light and cool ocean breezes—the perfect place for yoga.
In 2012, the Beach Club closed and the class moved to a room in the newly opened San Clemente Aquatic Center. This room is much smaller, square, and it has concrete floors covered with laminate. The room is air conditioned, and some class participants are too cold while others are too hot. In addition, the Aquatic Center is a noisy place. This is not an optimal location for yoga classes.
When we moved to the Aquatic Center, our instructor told us that this location would be our class’s temporary meeting place until the Beach Club re-opened. During the closure/construction time period, the Beaches, Parks and Recreation Department assured me the class would move back.
The Beach Club is now open, and I just learned this week that the second story recreation room has been exclusively leased to a catering company for special events and that yoga classes would no longer be held in that room. It is hard to believe that as taxpayers of San Clemente we cannot use this room unless we rent it from a private company.
In two weeks, we have the opportunity to elect two new Council members. I urge you to not vote for incumbents Bob Baker and Chris Hamm as the mismanagement of the Beach Club remodel occurred under their watch. We need more recreation venues, and now we have one less because the city leased the entire upstairs at the Beach Club.