Five Points Washington - Washington (IL)

5 /5 Vernon VanWaters: We really enjoyed the Christmas gospelfest. Great songs and great talent. Great range of singers from right here in Illinois.

4 /5 Steve Lindeman: Very functional facility with everything you need. People are nice and helpful and never seems to be crowded. Nice selection of treadmills, ellipticals, machines and free weights. Full pool and an indoor track. Visitor pass is pretty expensive at $11 a day unless you with a member which drops it to $5.

2 /5 Mitchell Wilson: Please for the love of God work on building somewhere else for old folks to play racquetball that’s not on the actual basketball courts. You’re killing all the hooper vibes by closing down courts for whatnot to make a quick buck off old folk recreational activities. Guaranteed missing out on revenue by not having 24 hour courts. You’d have way more action in the gym that would draw crowds, but nah. Let’s just schedule everything in the gym and not listen to people who’ve been loyal customers from the beginning. If this gym was 24 hours and actually addressed the basketball court fiascos it would be by far the best gym around. But instead I go elsewhere to work out now and only come around after I call in advance to make sure basketball courts are available. Other than that, no gripes. Great community center. Just wish they’d take people seriously. Losing out on easily 30% of potential revenue just to close down courts for etc activities instead of actually aiming for drawing a younger crowd. The gym is dead. It just is. I get that people work out there and whatnot, but there’s no youthful athletic energy there whatsoever. Nobody with any decent ball skills goes there anymore because they don’t wanna waste their time on crowded hoops. If I built a 24 hour hoops gym in Washington I’d steal $100k plus in revenue each year as a competitor without so much as breaking a sweat. But y’all don’t wanna listen. So until then, 5 Points will be a gym for the elderly and little kids whose parents can afford their memberships to heave basketballs with 15 people on one rim. I get that it’s a community center, but it’ll stay stagnant until someone with brains and power listens to the ones who notice these things. You’re deliberately killing your own business for less money to cater to old folks when it could be a thriving hoops gym. Whole friend groups would go there to ball if they weren’t crowded on one court with a million people. And that’s the energy you’re killing by being ignorant.

5 /5 Eric Shaffer: This is the second dance recital Ive attended at Five Points, and it really drives home how much community-need there is for a large, public, well-maintained, multi-use space. Both the staff and facility here are amazing! I personally experienced how an overwhelmed staff kept their cool through a weekend overfull with MLSD Dance Recital, birthday parties, open swim, and a baseball game across the street. Why is the last one relevant? Because the baseball fans were a bunch of rabid savages who took all the parking at Five Points to save themselves a bit of a walk. I witnessed little girls and mothers in tears, grandparents frantically looking for ANY place to park in an unfamiliar community, fathers ready to explode; yet, even in such a horrifically stressful and miserable situation, the Five Points staff not only policed the human menagerie, they also did so in a polite, respectful manner mindful of the persistent rise of COVID-19 infections. For example: my wife lost her phone the evening before during recital and the facility manager was kind enough to provide a guide backstage to where iOS claimed the phone to be. It turned out to be under a very kind persons seat, who called me after I updated the "lost" alert screen. Thankfully, I was easy to locate as I was standing onstage. Personally, I did not see a single staff member who was not wearing a mask; which is good, considering Im personally aware of the onset of active COVID-19 infections among at least 3 persons who were in attendance on June, 4th 2022. It could be a coincidence, but better that there were masks worn than not. Overall, a fantastic facility with near-perfect execution. (The only flaw I can find is that there isnt a parking control device that will raise spikes into the tires of lazy baseball fans who cant be bothered to think through the downstream consequences of their actions; however, Im confident this could be achieved with some volunteers from the Sheriffs department kind enough to lend their mobile spike strips)