Open House shows off Lazy Creek Rec Center renovations

An additional building allows Lazy Creek Recreation Center to offer more services to residents. (Photos by Kelvin Portillo)

By Kelvin Portillo, Correspondent

The City of Menifee’s Lazy Creek Recreation Center is newly renovated with the addition of a second building. On Friday, the City displayed the newly renovated facilities with an open house to a large crowd of Menifee residents.

The improvements made to the facility include a renovated teen center, new restrooms, and a slew of added amenities. The new building serves as two multipurpose rooms -- one for the Tiny Tots program and after school programs and the other as a serving area that can rented out in the foreseeable future. There is also an expanded patio and a basketball area.

“We have so many young people in this community that are going to benefit from this expanded facility, ranging from our Tiny Tots, preschool kids, to our high school aged kids that will be here for the summer. Plus, all of the nice amenities for programs throughout the year. City Council is just so pleased to see Lazy Creek Park turning such into such a jewel for our residents,” said Mayor Bill Zimmerman.

“The really amazing thing is we’ve been in this building for the last 20-plus years and had to fit all of our programs in there. Our summer camps sold out this year in less than an hour, so the vision for the new building is that we’re almost doubled or tripled the amount of kids we can offer programs to and meet the need of recreation services,” said Community Services Coordinator Michael Rinehart.

Lazy Creek Recreation Center has been around for decades. Ist once housed multiple program in one building and even had a pool once where the basketball area now resides. The idea to expand and renovate the center is to be able to serve and accommodate more children of different age groups for the community.

Of course, not all Menifee residents may be familiar with the history of Lazy Creek, such as Matthew and his family. They recently moved into the community a year ago and were checking out the summer camp program for their 4-year old daughter.

“We’re starting to branch out and look. It’s very nice,;I do like it. It’s really clean and we definitely will be coming back,” said Matthew.

Other residents such as Mike and Mari have similar comments to others about Lazy Creek renovations.

“One hundred percent improvement. I remember the pool and it was totally different. The staff is amazing and very family oriented. Our kids are home schooled, so this is an outlet for our kids to interact with other kids in the community in a safe environment. Our personal experience is pretty new as a family."

Lazy Creek Recreation Center is located at 26480 Lazy Creek Road. For more information about City of Menifee Community Services, visit the department’s website here.