Mill Valley Community Center

A good cheap gym and great big pool!

I coordinated a wedding in the beginning of the year at this wonderful facility. I met Seth 2 weeks prior at the site visit and he was a pleasure to work with!
I love the building layout, and the fact that there’s a spacious parking lot and all helpful staff. It is rare to find a venue with all 3 of these «pluses»! They let clients use all the round and rectangular tables needed and have it set up prior to your arrival. Saving on table rentals is another pro of renting the Mill Valley Community Center.

I love this place!
What has been a stand out for me is the pool and aquatics program. Steven Cortes, the Aquatics Program Manager is super helpful and goes out of his way to accommodate special requests and answers all of my many emails with great gusto. He also displays a heartfelt interest in helping youth to reach their full potential by pairing them with the right instructor and considering what can be done to help, even if it is outside of the box.
The instructors (we have had four) are all top notch and very caring. My older child arrived terrified just to stand in the pool, but the teachers have gently coached her to swimming on her own and putting her head under water without fear. This is a huge victory which is due to the compassion and skill of the instructors.
In addition, I have attended many events at the inside facility which is surprisingly nice for a community center. It’s contemporary, nicely appointed, has lots of sunlight and tons of free parking. Too, our son often frequents these fields for soccer. There are no field more beautiful than these with Mt. Tam in the background and the creek at the field’s edge. Attend a game at sunset and you will be floored at the vista before you.
5 stars for everything! And Kudos to Steven for shining a bright light on the aquatics program with his tremendous professionalism and genuine concern for his students and staff.

It’s nice to have a gym and a pool in Mill Valley for the community.
Positives:
Local.
Clean .
Fees are ok priced.
Can buy guest pass vs membership, huge benefit (changes to 4 stars over 3 stars due to this).
Negatives:
Pool and gym aren’t anything huge.
It would be nice to have more lanes in the pool for public lap time.
If fees increase, they’ll be too high for what it is.
Parking can be a major issue (as in none).

I’ve been swimming laps here for years. It is a pleasant neighborhood pool and the wonderful employees keep us coming back.

Swimming is very important to me. The pool here was a life saver on various occasions!

I come here most Fridays with special needs clients to go swimming. The lifeguards (especially the one with the beard) are super nice and the other patrons tend to be patient and understanding. My only complaint is that the family changing room is often occupied by one person and it’s hard for those with special needs to understand why they have to wait. The management won’t support what the sign on the door says, that the elderly and disabled should use the accessible amenities in the regular locker rooms so families and the disabled with opposite gender care givers can have a place to change, too.

I don’t see why everyone isn’t here. I lived in Healdsburg but this place makes it worth struggling thru the crazy crowds of S Marin

The Center is modern, has a large parking lot, clean bathrooms, and apparently different sized rooms. I attended a small meeting with 10 people over a period of two days.
My main complaint was noise from the upstairs area. It sounded like kids were running around. I don’t know if anyone else was bothered by it but I found it very distracting.

From the outside, this place looks like a ski resort minus the snow. It’s a beautiful building. The main building has a beautiful ballroom with tons of windows and then a lot of smaller «classrooms». There is a fitness center in a second building that has an indoor pool, cardio and weight machines, a dance studio, and locker facilities. I didn’t really get to see the pool area, but there were a lot of kids running around so I assume they had swimming and diving lessons. The cardio and weight area was smaller than I anticipated. There were only a handful of each type of cardio machine, and it was pretty full, when I was there on a Sunday afternoon. It only gets three stars due to size of the actual fitness center where the machines were located. Also due to the customer service. People at the desks in both buildings weren’t very friendly. When I gave them my name and said that I was there for a special event, the girl just looked at me and said «upstairs». No «hi». No smile. Nothing. I’m a pretty pleasant person so I find that pretty irritating, especially when you’re working a front desk of a facility.

DON’T EVER RENT THIS FACILITY!!! Dealing with Seth the rental facility coordinator was awful. He’s eager to collect the funds for their overpriced facility but when it comes to actually meeting the standards he promises, he fails miserably. I came by the facility twice to meet with him only to have the front desk tell me he was too busy. I requested 15 minutes of setup time and he told me that I needed to pay for it. CLASSLESS!!!
Seth failed to mention that there was a very large memorial service going on right across the way. He booked my son’s birthday party right across from a memorial service for a young mother. How tasteless on his part. So disrespectful towards the memorial service. I can’t imagine how horrified their guests must have been to have 5 year old kids right across the way laughing and running around.
Because he failed to mention the size of the service, the parking lot was completely full. ALL of my guests including myself, had to park either in the middle school, gas station and as far as the Cantina.
When we arrived to the room, it was disgusting. The sinks were dirty, the carpeted floor was disgusting. All the ugly chairs and couch and other crap they had in the room were NOT removed as I requested. My guests asked the maintenance guys to borrow a vacuum cleaner and started cleaning up the facility and moving all that stuff out of the room as guests kept arriving.
I was in tears. When I finally sent an email to Seth, 2 days after the event asking him to respond, he didn’t even bother replying.
Reading all the prior posts about this place and the event coordinator, looks like I’m not alone. If you’re looking for a place to rent, find a place where the people can accommodate you the way they promise you to. Because if you rent here expect something to go wrong.

This is a great facility! I especially love the staff and how friendly everybody is. The pool was perfect and my kids had a wonderful time. We loved it so much so that we decided to sign up for swim lessons in the winter. That is especially hard to do since most of the pools in Marin are outdoors and really cold.

I attended an event here and I have to say for a community center it is a pretty place. Very spacious with blond wood pergo flooring clean bathrooms and waiting area.
If a person was considering a wedding here it would be a good spot because they have ample parking, nice reception area and a large rental room with huge windows. The outside view is just so so with a view of a large green lawn and of course you risk someone playing a baseball game outside on the lawn and peeping in at you.

I’m rating this place in terms of the rental facilities. I rented it for my wedding in June. I know this is an overdue review but I’ve been busy.
The reason for the 3 stars is because of what happened the day of the rental. I had rented out the space for the whole so my caterer can use the kitchen and to set up. However when my brother and my future husband when to drop off the alcohol the blue ugly chairs where out. When I specially told them 2 days before that I will not be using them because I’m renting out chairs. My brother and husband to be had to remove the chairs by themselves because they did not help them at all.
Once I got to the reception I they’re ugly sofas in the lobby were still there when I had discuss with them that I wanted those to be removed.
Everything that I had asked them to and they had agreed to wasn’t met. The only thing they got right was the rental date. Please be warned if renting from them expect them to have everything wrong and for you to everything yourself.

Wonderful place to attend an event. Didn’t partake in anything else, no gym, didn’t rent anything, or anything like that. If some sort of event takes place here in the future, I’d be excited to attend, unless there are a ton of people, they may not fit so well.

I am a big fan of the MVCC. The site is clean and very accessible and has some great resources with a weight room and great lap/​swimming pool. In this last year where I have been seriously working on getting into shape, the MVCC has been invaluable. Particularly my personal trainer at the MVCC Elisa Menzel. She has taken a holistic approach in core, cardio and weights that has added up for me, more endurance and strength. Elisa background and training shows in the variety of exercises and sensitive to what ever my issue-​of-​the-​day is. I recommend MVCC and Elisa to many of my Marin friends that have been hesitant in starting a routine.

This is a great Gym! It’s very hard to get much information on this place and I assume it’s because Mill Valley residents would rather not have it get too crowded. So, share this tip wisely. At 180 Camino Alto in the building behind the one with the front desk there’s a pool and gym and ballet/​yoga space. It’s clean, bright and very friendly. They have enough cardio machines to serve their needs, most of the universal weight equipment (which i don’t use but it’s there) and free weights. Not a lot of space for stretching or floor work but during the day the studio just off the gym is free and offers a ton of extra floor space. The dance class I attended here was superb. They seem to draw from the Roco dance teachers.
The other thing to mention is this place is really affordable but is much nicer than the Y. I spent a year checking out both the swanky places like the Bay Club as well as the smaller gyms around Marin and this is the only one that really appealed to me. The staff and the people working out here are down to earth and friendly.
And that concludes my 400^th review.

Their pool is amazing. Indoor, heated, and large. They also have a water slide set up for kids young and old alike.

My experience at the MVCC was in terms of renting the facility for a wedding, not as an actual gym member.
MVCC did an absolutely abysmal job in terms of securing the location for my family’s wedding. The day of the rehearsal (less than 24 hours before the actual ceremony) we were told there was going to be the Southern Marin Bronco’s having their football practice 25 feet from the location of the ceremony! The facilities coordinator was very unhelpful, had little information or alternatives for us to work with — essentially told us we had to deal with it. THE DAY OF THE WEDDING, they held a water carnival on the grass where our ceremony was to be held, turning it into muddy slush. Again provided little alternative or help.
The complete lack of organization in terms of scheduling events, the disregard for ceremony and professionalism, along with little to no recompense (except for some financial reimbursement) makes me strongly unrecommend this place for a private function.

My job is to eat. No, seriously. That’s what I get paid to do. Consume, pretty much from 8am until 5pm. Food, food, food. Eat, eat, eat.
I lead a rough existence.
As good as that sounds to my friends, my lovers, my parents; it’s actually pretty much this not naturally thin girl’s nightmare.
So, you see my predicament…
Fortunately I live within walking distance of the Mill Valley Community Center, where for the bargain price of $ 7, I can use their lap pool to swim off the accumulating fat on my ass that the Bundt Cakes, S’mores, Pomegranate Cocktails, Mac & Cheese and Fried Potato Salad that work made me eat that day is causing.
You have to shower before you go in the pool. House rules. It’s clean and sterile, and kids rarely pee in this pool, because they are Mill Valley stock, and Mill Valley stock are taught that peeing in the pool is bad form and way too low brow for the likes of Southern Marin.
What the lifeguard doesn’t know about me is that I grew up in San Rafael. All those silly peeing and showering rules don’t apply here, folks.