OLATHE, Kan. — With public pools and spraygrounds closed in many areas throughout the metro, people are looking to bring the fun into their own backyards.
In the last two months, Family Leisure in Olathe has sold more pools and spas than they have in the last two years.
“In particular in the last four weeks we’ve seen a huge spike of people coming in to the store,” said Family Leisure President Dennis White.
“We have had to monitor a little bit try and keep our social distancing, but fortunately enough, our store is big enough where we can accommodate a lot of people.”
Kayla Christian bought an above-ground pool Monday. She decided that perfect time for her family to invest in a pool is during the pandemic.
“Because I’m pregnant, we don’t really want to go out in public and do all the big festivities,” she said. “Plus, pools are not opening from what we know.”
Public pools and spraygruonds will remain closed this summer in Kansas City, Overland Park, Prairie Village and other municipalities.
KC Parks and Rec Deputy Director Roosevelt Lyons said the decision to close city pools was made in the interest of community safety.
“The real problems come with the high touch areas and also the contact. You get a bunch of kids together and it gets to be really hard to keep them from coming together in large groups of people,” he said.
Kids and families, however, are still looking to have fun at home.
“We hope we find a pool,” 9-year-old Brooklyn said.
Her 8-year-old sister, Alex, said, “We’re trying to find a pool because all we can do is swim because all we will ever do is just stay inside.”
At Family Leisure, there has also been a jump in sales for outdoor playgrounds and trampolines.
“Trampoline sales were great until everybody ran out,” Dennis White said laughing.
“We’ve had people coming from Illinois. We have people coming from Nebraska to pick ‘em up while we still had them in stock and at this point they’re probably going to be very difficult to find until probably the end of July.”
White admitted he’s worried about having enough pools to sell as the summer goes on, but for now, they’re stocked up and ready to keep the KC metro cool as the weather heats up.
