SPIRE Institute

"Spent 3.5 days for MAAC swim meet. Well run, no major complaints. It was a little warm in the stands 2 of the days but not too bad. The PA system or lack there of was really my major complaint. There are speakers hanging from the ceiling, but they were not being used. There were 2 large PA speakers in front of the MC and it was basically Charlie Browns teacher for 3.5.days. Could barely understand a word. We will be back for next year's MAAC meet and I am pretty happy about that."

"Had a volleyball tournament here. It’s not the worst place we’ve played, but it certainly wasn’t the best. The garbages were overflowing and not changed by noon. The bathrooms were a wreck. A mean, a wreck. No one changed paper towels or even pretended to clean up. It was filthy. When you have that many bodies in a place—you have to hire enough people to help throughout the day. I also can’t stress how bad the seating sucks. You are around the edge upstairs and can’t see your kids. They didn’t even bother to set up the bleacher seating up there—we had to haul them over ourselves. Also, there were other practices going on. Some kids were playing basketball and brought huge speakers and blasted bass during the tournament. I’m not saying we lost a game because of it—but it didn’t help. The kids said they couldn’t hear each other. I complained to one of the staff, and he said he’d take care of it. He didn’t. Really rude stuff. The food there isn’t great. It was dry and overpriced. Not a great experience. I will say they did have a police officer, which is always good. Again, we’ve played some questionable places, but at the very least we could see our kid play. Not excited about this place. Oh, and bring your jacket—the heating bills aren’t being paid."

"The facility is state of the art but that’s the only good comment you can make about this place. The management of the meets run for the track facility are pathetic at best. Meets cancelled with no reason given at the last minute. While athletes are attempting to warm up for events the coaches at the spire academy will clear multiple lanes for their athletes to workout when they have access to the facility any other time, disrupting the teams whom have made the investment to travel and compete there. Unfortunately this isn’t a recent issue, the facility has been run like this for years."

"Parking here is terrible. Rough, gravely surface that is not even nor an actual parking lot. Facilities are nice, but need some options when needing a beverage or snack. Not much choice."

"I had heard such big things about SPIRE, but was pretty disappointed when I got here. The review is mainly for the aquatic center, but extends to the grounds as well. First, the exterior for something that cost as much as this is rumored to cost is pretty blah to look at. We were here for a swim meet and had to park in a huge dusty rock gravel parking lot. Further down the lot, part of the building is boarded up with weeds growing out of it, and dry rot...looks unfinished. The whole place looks like a ‘what could have been’ story. The entrance to the pool for something that is supposed to be a premier location for athletic events is so plain, if it didn’t have stickers on the windows, I would miss it. The interior was very nice, which is the saving grace of the whole facility. But then you get frustrated again once inside because the construction causes the COMPLETE loss of cell signal, and their Free WiFi is woefully incapable of handling the bandwidth required for even the smallest crowd. Tough to use swimming’s online meet reporting tool with no signal, and this is across all swim events sponsored by USA Swimming. It doesn’t surprise you that the place is struggling when taking all these factors into account.... Add into that the bad business sense....they had a pretty substantial crowd here, and they have a full cafeteria right where everyone comes in that wasn’t open ...that could have been thousands of dollars of revenue. It’s not the hundred dollar bills, it’s the nickels and dimes wasted that doom projects like this....."