If you have driven Patterson Road past 28 1/4 in the last few months, you have watched the stucco go up on a building that spent most of the last decade as a rumor. The Community Recreation Center at Matchett Park opens for good on September 25, and after years of renderings and ballot language, the doors are finally real.
The city's membership dashboard, published before opening, provides an early snapshot of sign-ups at the new center.
What Actually Happens on Opening Weekend
The ribbon-cutting starts at 4 p.m. Friday, September 25, in front of the building, with complimentary refreshments and speeches before the doors open to the public. From 5 to 8 p.m. that evening, admission is free. Free access continues from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, September 26.
The pools are where the planning matters most. Because the city expects heavy turnout, Saturday access to the five St. Mary's Pools is split into three two-hour blocks, first come first served. When a session ends, everyone clears the pool deck before the next group gets in. If your plan is to show up whenever and swim all afternoon, that plan will not survive contact with the schedule. Check the session times ahead of time if the water is the reason you are going.
Regular hours start the following Monday, September 28, at 5:30 a.m. From there the building settles into a routine: 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 5:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. The pools and the climbing wall close half an hour before the rest of the building.
What's Actually Inside the Building
The 107,000-square-foot facility earns the size. Beyond the five pools, which include two water slides, a lazy river, a diving board, a pool climbing wall, and jumping platforms, the building holds:
- A separate indoor climbing wall built in three styles, including a rock-realistic panel modeled on Independence Monument
- A three-lane indoor running track
- A three-court gymnasium set up for basketball, volleyball, and pickleball
- An outdoor synthetic turf field lined for soccer and lacrosse
- A Kids Club, party rooms, and community meeting spaces
- An Intermountain Health Matchett Park Clinic operating on site
That clinic detail is easy to skim past, but it is unusual for a city rec center to house a working medical clinic inside the building. It came from the same funding partnership that grew the facility well past what voters originally saw on paper.
Early Membership Numbers
The city started tracking active memberships in June 2026, three months before the doors opened. That first snapshot recorded 1,286 active memberships and passes. Of those, 643, just about half, were Healthcare passes: SilverSneakers and Renew Active, the insurance-sponsored fitness benefits typically used by older adults.
These counts describe memberships and passes, not the number of individual people who may use the center.
The pricing structure offers another point of comparison. A resident adult membership runs around $42 a month. A family plan covering up to four people, with no more than two adults, runs about $76 a month, plus $12 per month for each additional child. These plans have monthly prices; SilverSneakers and Renew Active are insurance-sponsored fitness benefits. The pre-opening dashboard records Healthcare passes alongside the other memberships and passes.
The June figures are an early snapshot of memberships and passes, not a measure of who will visit or use the pools after opening. The membership mix may change as the center begins regular operations.
"Today we actually have opened up the facility to do tours," Parks and Recreation Director Ken Sherbenou told Western Slope Now when the first walkthroughs began in August, noting that everything except the pools was available to see ahead of the opening.
Twelve Years Between the First Sketch and This One
The reason this took so long has less to do with construction and more to do with money that did not exist for most of the last decade.
Matchett Park is 205 acres the city bought in 1996 and then mostly left alone. For two decades it was a disc golf course and a network of farm roads used for walking, running, and biking, valued by neighbors precisely because nothing had been built on it. A 2013 planning grant from Great Outdoors Colorado got a master-planning process moving, and by 2014 the city had a plan on paper. But a plan is not a building. When Grand Junction's Parks and Recreation department presented its refined vision for the site in 2017, the community recreation center was still listed on the map as a placeholder. City council had not approved a facility, and no funding source had been identified for it.
That gap between placeholder and building took until April 2023 to close, when voters approved a 0.14% sales tax increase and the debt needed to construct it. Even then, the two funding options presented to the public were a $55 million building around 65,000 square feet or a $70 million building around 83,000 square feet. What actually broke ground on June 1, 2024, and opens this month, is 107,000 square feet, more than 20,000 square feet larger than either option voters were shown, made possible once Intermountain Health and a Department of Local Affairs grant came in on top of the sales tax revenue. That is also where the on-site clinic came from. The building residents are walking into this month is not quite the building that was on the ballot.
What This Means If You're Nearby
If you live within a short drive of 28 1/4 and Patterson, the practical calendar is simple. Tours run through Thursday, September 24, no registration required, just show up at the main entrance during a scheduled time. The free weekend runs the 25th and 26th, with the pool session structure worth checking before you go. Memberships have been on sale since June, and day passes will be available once regular operations start, priced at $9 for resident adults, $7 for seniors, and $6 for youth, with higher rates for guests from outside city limits.
Whether the share of Healthcare passes changes after opening will become clearer over time. For now, the June dashboard records the pre-opening mix of memberships and passes.
The Maves Group pays attention to projects like this because they tell you something about how a neighborhood actually functions day to day, not just how a listing photographs. If you want to talk about what is changing on this side of the Grand Valley, or anywhere else in Grand Junction, Fruita, or Palisade, reach out to The Maves Group and start your move with Maves.
