Why Manhattan Beach's Only Public Pool Is Still Four Feet Deep

Begg Pool at 1402 N. Peck Avenue is 25 yards long and six lanes wide, and the water is about four feet deep from one end to the other. It was built in the 1950s. It holds lap swim, water aerobics, swim team, summer camp, lessons and the physical education swim classes required at Manhattan Beach Middle School, all in the same shallow rectangle.

It's also one of the most-used public facilities in town. In a 2022 city survey, 41% of residents said they use Begg Pool, and 81% of households favored making a new 35-meter pool a priority for laps, competition and water sports. The same survey named the pool's size, its depth, limited lane availability and aging locker rooms as its weak points.

So a lot of people want a deeper, longer pool, and the city has spent years studying how to build one. The reason Begg is still four feet deep has less to do with the pool itself than with the ground it sits on.

The Costly Part Is Getting to the Water

The City runs Begg Pool under a joint-use agreement, but the land belongs to the Manhattan Beach Unified School District. That one fact shapes everything else. Any major rebuild at Begg is a project on someone else's parcel, at a site that was never laid out to serve a modern aquatics center.

The city's 2023-2024 Begg Pool Modernization Study, prepared by HMC Architects, priced two options for that site. Renovating the existing shallow pool came to $27.9 million. A new center with a 25-yard teaching pool and a 35-meter competition pool came to $40.3 million.

The site was flagged as a problem even before those numbers came out. In 2023, then-councilmember Steve Napolitano told Easy Reader that the infrastructure needed to reach the Begg site could cost half as much as the pool, or as much as the pool itself.

That warning has largely played out. In an October 2026 profile in Easy Reader, Councilmember Amy Howorth, who ran four years ago on a platform that included a new Begg Pool, said the project had run into tens of millions of dollars in road and accessibility costs.

"Not giving up on the pool, but right now it's too much of a heavy lift."

Howorth, a former MBUSD board trustee, also told the council in November 2025 that she had run into "a brick wall" trying to work with the school district on Begg, which sits on district land. As Easy Reader reported, she noted that MBUSD had passed a $250 million school facilities bond the year before.

So the Pool Moved to a Parking Lot

If the expensive part is the Begg site, the obvious step is to build somewhere else. That's what the proposal on the table does.

Bay Club, which owns and operates the Manhattan Country Club, offered to build and run an aquatic center on the city-owned parking lot next to the club. According to Easy Reader's account of the November 4, 2025 council meeting, Bay Club put the cost at $8 million to $12 million. That's far below the Begg estimates, in part because a private builder doesn't face public-agency requirements such as prevailing wage.

Here's how the proposal compared with Begg as of that November 2025 meeting, based on the same reporting:

Bay Club's $15 fee would also give a day of access to its fitness facilities in El Segundo, across Rosecrans Avenue, and in Redondo Beach's King Harbor. It would not include the Country Club itself. Bay Club also offered up to $1 million toward repairing Begg Pool whether or not the city accepts the new center.

The new pool would go a little deeper, but it would not replace Begg. Howorth said so at the meeting. "This is in addition to. It doesn't replace," she said, describing the plan as "simply additional water." Moving off the Begg site gets around the access-cost problem, but it leaves the four-foot pool on Peck Avenue in place, with the same age and the same open questions it had before.

Why the Council Didn't Simply Say Yes

Then-Mayor Pro Tem Joe Franklin called the Bay Club offer "a solid solution," and Howorth said she supported moving forward. A council majority held back. As Easy Reader reported, their main concerns were losing control of programming, higher fees, and more activity at a site with less parking.

Then-Mayor David Lesser pointed to the land itself. "This pool would be built on public land," he said, and some residents would have trouble affording the proposed fees. The idea of a city program to subsidize the higher fees came up several times. The staff report said no other city has such a model, but that one could be explored.

Councilmember Steve Charelian, the city's former finance director, made the case for a different trade. The parking-lot site that makes Bay Club's numbers work could also make a city-built pool cheaper than rebuilding at Begg. He said Measure MMB, the voter-approved sales tax increase expected to bring in $5.9 million a year, was meant for infrastructure projects like this one.

Councilmember Nina Tarnay summed up the choice:

"Our residents are going to have to decide, do we want to pony up the money and build it ourselves, or do we want to get married and be in a long term relationship with Bay Club?"

The council voted unanimously for a two-track approach. Staff would keep negotiating with Bay Club, and a consultant would estimate, for $5,000 to $10,000, what it would cost the city to build its own pool on the same lot.

Two Pool Projects on Parkview, With Different Owners

Since that vote, a second pool project has come up nearby, and it's easy to mix the two up. On May 13, 2026, the Planning Commission took up Bay Club's own application for the Manhattan Country Club at 1330-1334 Parkview Avenue. It would allow demolishing an existing office building, building a new pool and pool amenities, and increasing club memberships. That pool belongs to the private club. City planning staff said the exploration of a public aquatic center on the adjacent city lot is not part of that application.

On the public side, the city's budget moved in the other direction. In the five-year capital improvement program report adopted in June 2026, the council's May 12 revisions cut the Begg Pool Facility Upgrades project's prior appropriations from $702,357 to zero. The same revisions raised the Senior and Scout Community Center renovation's fiscal 2027 funding from zero to $4.7 million.

As of Howorth's October 2026 interview, the city was still exploring the Bay Club deal for a public-access aquatic center on city land, with the $1 million contribution toward Begg as part of it. For now, the deeper water on Parkview Avenue is private, and the public pool is still the shallow one on Peck.

Getting a Lane at Begg Before December 18

In the meantime, Begg still runs a full fall program, and the cheapest swim in town takes a little planning. The city's aquatics page lists the current schedule.

1. Know the season. Fall lap swim runs through December 18, and weekend recreational swim runs through December 13. Check the aquatics page for the next schedule after those dates.
2. Pick a block. Lap swim, for ages 7 and up, runs 7:00 to 7:50 a.m. Monday through Friday; 7:00 to 7:50 p.m. Monday through Thursday, with an extra 8:00 p.m. slot on Mondays; 3:00 to 5:50 p.m. on Fridays; and 9:00 a.m. to 12:50 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Each reservation is 50 minutes, starting at the top of the hour.
3. Book early. Residents can reserve up to 10 days ahead. Nonresidents can reserve up to 7 days ahead.
4. Book online. Online lap swim costs $5 for residents and $7 for nonresidents, plus a 5.84% convenience fee. Walk-up is $7 for everyone.
5. Check in on time. Check in no more than 5 minutes before your slot. Lanes not claimed within the first 10 minutes are forfeited, and each lane holds at most two swimmers.
6. Bring the kids on weekends. Recreational swim runs noon to 12:50 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. The city's fee listing puts online rec swim reservations at $5 for residents and $7 for nonresidents, and walk-up at $7, so check the price when you book.

Whatever comes of the Bay Club talks or a city-built center, any new pool's fees will be compared with the $5 resident lap lane at Begg.

If you'd like to know how civic projects like the Begg Pool decision could affect your corner of Manhattan Beach, Gauss Real Estate Group follows these council decisions closely and is glad to walk you through them. Let's start the conversation today.