Coal Harbour Community Centre

I’m not sure what to rate, the gorgeous city meets shore views or the actual rec centre. It’s a beautiful facility located in an even more beautiful location, one of the few Vancouver locales where money grows on trees (and the condo buildings).
I wasn’t impressed with the parking situation. You think for a city recreation centre and all this talk about Canadians being more active they’d make it easier for people to get there and be there. If you’re going with sports equipment (like me with my huge badminton bag), the supposed 10-​minute walk from the Burrard station can be quite tedious. And it’s really more a 20-​minute walk. I had to cough up $ 7 for 2 hours worth of parking! Add that to the $ 4.25 rec fee (for a 90-​minute badminton session) and it got pretty expensive. It really is a rec centre that caters to people who live in the vicinity.

Play volleyball through Urban Rec and boy is this place cramped. Three courts shoulder to shoulder make for a very frustrating 90 minutes of play. The building is modern and all and for this in downtown it is easy to get to with paid parking.

I have called the Coal Harbour Community Centre a few times today trying to rent a room, and felt like I am just an annoyance to them. I spoke to the same person each time, and before I could finish asking my questions about the room (we were only on the phone for about 5 minutes) he cut me off, said goodbye and hung up! I had to call back, and the same thing happened. Now I feel like if I call back to get the rest of the answers to my questions they will really see me as a nuance. I just want to rent a room! Stop hanging up on me!

New, shiny and catering to those that live in the area, the CHC as I like to call it inspires those of us who might have a harder time going to the gym to get moving. The views are of the oceans, which is a great reminder that we need to look nice in a bikini. The centre offers great kid-​friendly activities, lots of extra classes like yoga, pilates and dance classes, language studies, meditation-​all sorts of different cultural things that help fulfill life. The staff is friendly and chatty and if you sign up here, you can use your membership in other facilities.

This is one of the newer and more modern looking community centres in the city, and it also has a nice view of the mountains and water being in the heart of Coal Harbour. They have super friendly and chatty staff that is always helpful. But many community centres have nice staff.
The thing that separates it from many of the other centres are a few policies that make it much nicer to deal with:
1) My schedule doesn’t always allow me to commit to signing up for 15 weeks of a sport at the exact same time each week. So I frequently have to rely on stand-​by spots which can be hit or miss at many centres where they require you to show up in person to put yourself on the list. But here for all of the sporting times (badminton, basketball, etc.) you can put yourself on a waitlist by calling that morning. They will tell you how likely you are to get a spot so you don’t have to go down and then leave disappointed.
2) They take reservations for table tennis over the phone. You don’t have to fight with a bunch of aggressive seniors to win the table from them like a pool hall challenge.
3) They don’t oversell open sports like some of the other centres. So when you book a spot you are guaranteed play time. This is key. Nothing more frustrating than having to schlep down to get on a waitlist (boo!), get off the waitlist (hooray!), and then find out that the gym is so crowded that you won’t get to play much anyway (big boo!). That doesn’t happen here. So overall — hooray!