I welcomed the opportunity recently to sneak a peak at the newly renovated Carver Recreation Center on 4th Street prior to the grand opening Saturday. Carver is located in the newly renovated Jefferson School. The Carver fitness center has lots of cardiovascular machines and significantly more free weights than Smith Aquatic Center. The drop in fitness rooms are big. All of the rooms have a lot of natural light coming in. Ryan and I will be taking a gymnastics class at Carver at the end of the month and the room is lovely and inviting. Please read about all of the amenities of Carver on the website, I cannot do it justice.
Of course, being a sneak peak I found some snags. The locker rooms are small and called restrooms so there may be some confusion (if you are looking for the locker room, go to the restroom). My theory is that conventional wisdom in recreation center building says locker rooms do not need to be big if the center doesnt have a pool. I think Charlottesville is pretty spoiled by its locker rooms. For myself I will come to the center ready to work out and go home to change/shower. The shower is lovely, but there are only two. I think the women's restroom has only twelve lockers. There are cubbies in the hallway to store items-similar to those outside of the group fitness rooms at ACAC. I can imagine that if a group fitness class gets out, it will be tricky to change and shower in the locker room. Having said that, I know now not to plan to shower/change at the facility. I did mention the lack of a bench in the locker room, the Director assured me that the benches were on order and would be in the locker rooms as soon as possible.
I highly recommend checking out the facility. The cost for a monthly membership is low ($39/month or $390/year for City residents) for all of the amenties, including two facilities (Smith and Carver).
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