For the first time in its 60-year history, the Roslyn Pines Pool & Tennis Club, located within the Village of Roslyn, is offering special rates to entice residents to beat the heat as the summer passes the midway point.
Another first: the Village of Roslyn is helping pool officials spread the word.
Earlier this month, the village’s board of trustees sent a letter signed by Village of Roslyn Mayor John Durkin to residents describing the pool’s lowered membership rates available through Sept. 2.
A family membership will cost $950, a couple will cost $750, a single membership will cost $600 and a senior citizen (age 65 or older) will cost $500, according to the letter.
“If you do not have other plans for the balance of the summer, you may wish to take advantage of this opportunity, which is being made available only to Village residents,” Durkin wrote. “[My wife] Diane and I intend to join!”
Pool officials said they hope the letter helps increase its membership, which in the last few years has decreased from approximately 230 families to fewer than 180.
Roslyn Pines Pool & Club trustee Miriam Furman said the pool, a private and not-for-profit club, typically runs each year on a 200-family membership at a price of $2,250 per family that includes $100 in food coupons and $50 in guest passes.
Pool membership had once been exclusive to Roslyn residents, but in the last two decades, Furman said the pool has accepted members from throughout the North Shore and New York City.
But ever since the Village of East Hills opened its pool in 2006, an amenity available to all East Hills residents, Furman said the Roslyn Pines Pool has seen a drop in its membership.
“It’s not like they’re a direct competitor,” Furman said. “But the East Hills residents can go to that pool because it’s covered in taxes.”
Furman said returning membership has also declined in recent years, as households that were no longer raising children also had no more use for the pool.
“They’re not joining the pool like they used to,” Furman said. “We don’t have the kind of support from the neighborhood that we once had. That’s what seems to be happening.”
Furman said there has also been a drop-off in the membership of families with young children, who in the past would come to the pool after long days at summer camp, which she attributed to the economic downturn of the last decade.
But Furman said the primary reason for this year’s drop in membership was poor weather through the early part of the summer.
The pool tends to gain members as the summer progresses, Furman said, but until last week’s heat wave, there hadn’t been much of a need to cool down.
Furman said the club reached out to Village of Roslyn Deputy Mayor Marshall Bernstein for help in increasing membership, who suggested the village publicize the pool’s lowered rates.
Furman said discussions have begun between the pool and village to continue its relationship in some capacity in the future, a sentiment Durkin confirmed in his letter to residents.
“If Village residents find [the pool’s rates] to be an attractive opportunity, it may set the stage for further cooperation between the club and the Village for the future,” Durkin wrote.
Furman said pool officials may offer “early bird” incentives in August that would lower the cost of membership next summer, adding the pool has offered similar incentives before.
“All options will be investigated,” Furman said.
