The Greensboro Aquatics Center in 2025 AD — A ONE ACT PLAY

It is the year 2025. It’s now been 15 years since the Aquatics Center opened for business at the Greensboro Coliseum. The City of Greensboro has been spinning stories for a decade now that swimming is bigger than football.

Coliseum Director Matt Brown is proposing a 75% expansion of the Aquatics Center. The City Council fully supports the 75% expansion. Brown claims that the 75% expansion will attract world-class competitors and fill Greensboro’s hotels. The citizens are eager to fund the expansion of the pool because they believe it is vital for the economy.

The News & Record, a bi-weekly 8.5 x 11 single sheet printed on both sides endorses the pool expansion and looks forward to selling even more Aquatics Center advertising and newspapers to foreign English-speaking swimmers.

A local blogger begins reporting an Aquatics Center fraud and cover-up. He publishes a CHART that looks nothing like the City of Greensboro’s swimming claims and nothing like the News & Record’s stories about how Greensboro desperately needs more swimming.

The blogger’s CHART contradicts the city’s propaganda and reveals the Aquatics Center is bringing in less revenue than 15 years ago when it opened. The CHART says the pool is not living up to the projections that promised to fill Greensboro’s hotels and bolster the local economy.

Here is the blogger’s CHART:

Greensboro’s bloggers under the influence of 15 years of propaganda, news media cheerleading and photos of indigent swimmers standing on street corners with no place to swim immediately reject his CHART and claim he has no credibility. They write, “Everybody knows that Greensboro is running out of swimming.” They think, “What a fool he is to think swimming is declining!” The bloggers call him "criminally insane" and they refuse to list his Pool Scam among Greensboro's blogs. They won't even post comments to his stories.

 T W O   Y E A R S   L A T E R . . .


The local blogger has now churned out 78 stories and added two additional years of damaging pool data to his CHART. This past year -2024- $42 million was projected but the swim center only netted $31 million—not enough to pay its costs!

Swimming proceeds are still below what they were 15 years ago! The Aquatics Center is only half-paid and current ticket sales are not generating enough money to finish paying for the pool. In fact, the coliseum is raising swim ticket prices because revenue is decreasing and more money is needed.

The pool scam blogger conducts a swimming awareness survey and discovers that virtually all of Greensboro’s residents incorrectly believe Greensboro’s swimming business is thriving and revenue is increasing. The swim tax went up 10% and residents paid it because they think it is going toward the 75% expansion of the pool facility. The blogger reports that Greensboro’s citizens are grossly misinformed about the 15-year decline in revenue but no local media outlets will run with the story that citizens are totally misinformed.

All the bad news about swim center continues to be suppressed and the city is moving ahead with the 75% expansion of the pool.

Let's review the facts of this 2025 pool expansion scenario?

—Pool revenue is less than it was 15 years ago. There has been no growth in revenue for 15 years! Current pool sales cannot pay the bills.




—The City of Greensboro is keeping the 15-year decline in pool revenue a secret. Its Aquatics web page shows no history of pool revenue.


—The only pool report the city makes is yesterday’s pool ticket sales compared to receipts on the same day one year ago. The News & Record prints that foolish daily report from which nothing can be concluded.


—The pool projections that warned Greensboro was “running out of swimming” never materialized. The public is totally unaware and thinks swimming is growing.


—The city is expanding the Aquatics Center by 75% to attract more events. A kept-in-the-dark public agrees to fund the expansion believing that Greensboro is “running out of swimming.”


—The city is not earning enough pool money to pay for the 75% expansion so it is levying pool tax increases.


—The press refuses to report the decline in revenue and the city’s failed projections. It continues to support the merits of the Aquatics Center expansion.


—The 75% expansion of the pool is scheduled to open this summer.

Filed by water proof reporter Mike J Baron on Jan. 15, 2025 AD