Ketchikan Parks & Recreation — Local services in Ketchikan

I’ve been in Ketchikan for about a month now, and while I get that moving somewhere new—especially a remote island—comes with some adjustments, the rec center experience has been a bit disappointing.

I’m a regular gymgoer, and lifting is usually how I start or end my day. The equipment is limited, which I expected, but what I didn’t expect was the atmosphere—dead silent, kind of cold, and totally antisocial. The whole space feels like you're supposed to keep your head down, pop in headphones, and ignore everyone around you. For someone who actually enjoys the gym as a social and energizing place, it’s kind of a bummer.

I was excited about the sauna, but it came with extra fees—$4 just to rent a towel, no locks on the lockers unless you bring your own or rent one, and you’re walking past the pool half-naked. It’s fine, just not welcoming.

Maybe it’s a rec center thing, or just small-town vibes, but getting nickel-and-dimed for outdated amenities and feeling totally disconnected while I’m there has been frustrating. I’ll keep using it while I’m here for the summer, since there aren’t many options and I already paid, but if you're thinking about joining—consider this a heads-up.

*edit to say that the staff is pretty nice, and the facility is pretty clean, so I bumped it up a star because I suppose those are the things that...

Not going to be renewing membership with this “gym”. The staff is nice for the most part, especially the front desk crew. HOWEVER, this place is filled with a bunch of disrespectful “adult” people (if you can call them that cause they act like children). Myself and many other younger gym goers are constantly treated disrespectfully by certain members who think that they own the place. It’s disappointing as I’ve been going to this place since 2018. In my 11 years of fitness, competing and training alongside both professional and amateur athletes who are all about supporting each others goals and aspirations, this gym is the complete opposite. It has no sort of accepting environment to its attendees by other members and these “adults” ego trips on other members do not exist in REAL training facilities . I unfortunately don’t have the names of the members who have treated other members and myself like dirt but I know I am not alone in the absolute child like behavior they’ve continue to display. Save your money and business as even though the amenities can be intriguing, it’s not worth feeling constantly judged and harassed on a constant...

It is well-known that Mayo Clinic, Stanford Medical, NYU, Orange County Youth, FIFA, NBA, NFL, AAHPERD, have identified and support pre-puberty weight lifting as critical to development and lifetime health habits. From age 10, when specific permission to lift with supervision was given by staff, until we were told at age 12.7 that the minimum age was 13, we lifted 6 times per week - many times with the facility supervisor in the room. Yesterday we were told that the age is and had always been 14. And the paper instructions on the walls (they said they had only changed the color recently) now says machines and free weights are further age restricted. We are not sure if there were complaints or whatever by such as listed by other reviewers, but the fact that access to a community asset is now even more severely limited - rather than promoted with benefit of proper instruction, building of body and health habits for a lifetime is an example of how not to run a community...