North Shore Aquatic Complex — Attraction in Saint Petersburg

I hear it's actually a fun place with the water park and all. The nearby playground is nice too. 1 extra star for that. Unfortunately the rest of this review is coming from a swim parent that is forced to occasionally attend this facility for youth competitions, and this facility is purely abysmal for that purpose. Mostly it's the PEOPLE that work there, but there's other things... or you can scroll down to where it says PEOPLE.

As a long-term parent of a swimmer, we have been to every facility within a 4-hour drive. Sure, they all have some problems. Long Center in CW is literally hypoxic for the indoor air quality, Countryside has nowhere to park.. essentially if you're not at FAST in Ocala then there's at least something that can be mentioned. However, North Shore is by far and away the worst of them all.

Your problems begin right away with the location. Praying for no event going on the same weekend at the nearby park or other location is a pipe dream, and the pool itself has about 30-40 spaces for events attended by hundreds. Every parking lot within a quarter mile is full with up to a dozen cars circling the lanes like sharks.

Next is the technology. Something is always broken. In this weekend's case, the scoreboard was barely usable. I don't know if they just decided to leave that up during the hurricanes (that would figure) and let nature have at it or what, but one whole side of the board was nigh impossible to decipher and the other side required a few wild guesses. Then some technology in the pool itself apparently broke, requiring them to use half of the pool for the entire event and make a half-day event go right through normal dinner times. For those attending the finals, they were there up to 12 hours. For swimming.

Then there's the PEOPLE. Largo, Clearwater x2, Naples, Sarasota, Land O Lakes, Ocala, Tampa... none of them compare to the brash rudeness of the staff at North Shore. They are constantly barking into the microphone at people. Mentioning and repeating rules over and over and over. Shouting at swimmers, reprimanding parents, ranting on at coaches and USA Swim volunteers. Sometimes they even get out from behind the desk and go point and shout directly at people when a simple talk would have sufficed. They are simply rude and bad-tempered people. The only people that are actually nice are the "phone gestapo" that they deploy during the 25-yard events.

Now let's get to that. The actual USA Swimming regulation is that you cannot take obscene photos of young swimmers when they are up on the blocks and ready to dive. That's all it says. These nutcases at the St Pete facility have overblown that into making sure no one can even have their phone out, at all, for the entire duration of the 25 yard events. To further police this, they deploy a team of vest-wearing volunteers that stand with their back to the swimming event, facing the crowd, ready to run up the stairs and order people to put their phone away entirely, even if they were holding it down and flat and couldn't possibly be using the camera. Apparently this is a massive overcorrection, I hear, from them actually receiving a warning or penalty from USA Swimming for not properly enforcing the regulation in the past, but it is overblown and ridiculous now at their facility. Somehow, NO OTHER facility polices at this level and yet does not receive any flak from USA Swimming, so I have no idea what they did to receive a violation, if they did at all.

Overall, not a great experience. At least there's a nice view of the beach and park. Also, some interesting planes pass overhead to their landing approach at the landing strip just beyond. Other than that, the facility is disheveled, the people are rude and pushy, the snacks are near obscure, the parking is the stuff of nightmares, and their only saving grace is that they do not charge you to come in (unlike some other facilities). If they did that last part, I'd likely just drop my kid off and go wait at a lounge...

The pool itself is clean and great but the terrible attitudes from the women in the office is a shame. Way too much attitude and way too little knowledge about their job and customer service or the area.

One woman literally argued with me twice now and another got in my face when I asked for her managers number. She literally walked out of the office and put her hand in my face. I think she needs to lay off the steroids some. Completely rude/ confrontational for no reason and unprofessional including the lack ofknowledge about the surrounding area (park).

They stated they were only responsible for the rec center. So when I stated the park is basically part of that they switched gears and said pool only.

Whichever it is, their interpersonal skills are hot garbage and I had to find a parking enforcer 5 blocks away because these women refused to help me.

They were literally that obnoxious and I received more help by patrons in the park than the staff that actually get paid to work there.

The women didn't even know which Avenue the pool or parking lot was on. That's pretty sad for an employee to not even know their surrounding area and then get an attitude with you over not knowing. It's like they are mad about their inability to be more of an asset to the city and your establishment. They did the least amount possible and had almost zero knowledge unless it was just laziness.

The parking enforcer was much more pleasant and assisted me way better and it wasn't even his job. These women went out of their way to not help me and then had the audacity to get nasty about it.

THEN, the "manager" literally walked her steroid self out of the office door around the corner to shove a business card in my face after playing victim because I told it that their customer service was horrendous.

It was almost as if the one woman is more concerned with being confrontational than doing her job or the ability to do her job. Which will inevitably chase people out of the area. Bad attitudes run business into the ground.

The lifeguards seemed to be very pleasant and the locker rooms are clean as well as...

If you are looking for a place to watch a rocket launch from and you are limited to anyplace south of Flora Wylie Park yet north of Vinoy Park and on the St Petersburg, Florida waterfront this is your place! I went today (1-15-23) for a Spacex Falcon Heavy launch. It was everything I dreamed it would be to watch something from a parking lot approximately 125 to 180 miles away from the launch site. Not sure of those numbers as I used the "As The Crow Flies" method of measuring distance. Unfortunately I used untrained wild crows and after seventeen attempts with no further contact with any of the crows I had to just guess at distance. This place seems to also have swimming pools and other activities on sight so you might want to check some of that out too is you are in the area. I was going to attach photos to help with the description but it seems all of my photos of the crows were out of focus as I could not get them to stand still for portraits. I do hope you find this review helpful in every possible way. Thank you bunches, Ron.

I managed to upload a few photos with review because I think people like having some visuals with the reviews. One is a blue jay from my back yard to give a visual representation of a Crow. Different color but still bird like. The other is my deaf cat named White Kitty that is a visual representation of something awesome which represents the rocket launch the was also...