For the first time since the pandemic began, the Durango Community Recreation Center will be open on Sundays beginning immediately.
“We’ll be open seven days a week now,” said Durango Parks and Recreation Director Ture Nycum.
Starting Sunday, the rec center will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the pool open from noon to 4:30 p.m.
Additionally, the rec center expanded its hours for the rock climbing wall on Saturday. It will now be open from noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays.
Assistant Recreation Director Kelli Jaycox said reopening on Sundays allows the rec center more time to schedule activities like pickleball.
Jaycox said the rec center’s fitness classes have become quite popular, and more will likely be added in the new year.
The Parks and Recreation Department has been scaling up operations at the rec center after it was forced to shut down because of COVID-19 in 2020.
“As the capacity of people we were allowed to have in the facility increased, we’ve slowly increased our hours of operation,” Jaycox said.
Nycum said hours are still not quite back to where they were before the pandemic. He said the rec center is still closing about an hour earlier than it used to before COVID-19.
“We will get back to what our normal hours were, I just can’t answer when that might be,” he said. “We’re adjusting as the community adjusts.”
The rec center has also been trying to add staff members to accommodate the return to normal hours.
“Like every other business in the community who are experiencing staff shortages, we are as well,” Nycum said. “We really need additional lifeguards to take a little bit of pressure off of our current staff.”
njohnson@durangoherald.com
