The Kingston neighborhood swim club is gone, but a new Cherry Hill recreational venue stands in its place
The Kingston swim club was part of the marketing plan for the development off Route 70 where split levels in 1960 sold for $16,990.
Residents of Cherry Hill’s Kingston neighborhood on Sunday stood on the site of their now-demolished swim club, but they weren’t there to mourn an institution that would have turned 70 years old next year.
Memories of watching generations of neighborhood children grow up at the club, and the family friendships that were formed, are still alive. Now, new memories will be made by young families that will use the town’s just-opened $5 million Kingston Park on the site with colorful playground equipment, a basketball court, and other amenities.
Like the other dozen swim clubs left in Cherry Hill, the Kingston club was part of the marketing plan for the development off Route 70 where split levels in 1960 sold for $16,990. A nonprofit in 1957 opened the club on nearly four acres of land donated by the Kingston Estates developer.
Children, their parents, their grandparents, and even great-grandparents sunned on the deck chairs and cooled off in the pool over the decades.
“There was a bunch of us at 12 noon on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend... [competing for] who was going to be the first one in the water for the season. Then on Labor Day Monday, who was going to be the last one fished out of the water?” recalled Rob Connor, whose grandparents moved to Kingston from Camden in the late 1950s.
Connor, a Cherry Hill Township Council member, was born in 1973 and was one of the pool kids because his parents moved into Kingston. Now, he lives with his family across the street from the Deland Avenue club site, where his daughters enjoyed the pool as he did.
Watching them tear the pool apart was rough.
“It was really hard,” Connor said, adding the positive side to the property’s rebirth: The pool would have shut down on Labor Day, but the new playground is open year-round.
Facing high expenses to maintain the club, the nonprofit stopped making mortgage payments, and lender TD Bank threatened to foreclose. The township paid $441,000 to buy the property, zoned institutional, to keep it from being developed.
Mayor David Fleisher, speaking at Sunday’s official opening event, thanked the neighbors and Cherry Hill for making “this important investment in our town, memorializing the great and rich history of the Kingston Swim Club and making sure that this property was preserved, protected and enjoyed, literally, for generations to come.”
“If there is ever an example of how local government is supposed to partner with the neighborhood, it is the new Kingston Park,” Fleisher said.
Speaking over the sound of children at play, Greater Kingston Civic Association head Yolanda (Yoli) Lorenz reminisced to the group about her years as a swim club member.
“It was a beautiful place, a beautiful experience,” she said of watching the children advance from the baby pool to the larger pool and mothers bonding in friendship.
“I’ve built lifelong relationships with some of the people that are here today,” she said. “So this was a great reunion. I look forward to this being the same kind of atmosphere for the people that are here new to this place now. And I love that it’s open to everybody.”
Jerry Thompson, who moved to the Kingston development in 1983 and is writing a swim club history, told the group that the club sold 355 membership bonds in 1956 and opened in June 1957 — welcoming thousands of families in its 62 years.
“Families forged lifelong friendships at the club’s social events and through swimming and diving championships and with the other 13 swim clubs, as well as Tri-County Championships,” Thompson said.
Members joined the men’s softball and basketball teams and mixed volleyball team, he said. The women’s softball team continues to compete against the other swim clubs.
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