If you are looking to purchase a membership in order to use the fitness center, I would highly advise against it. The monthly fee is the same or more expensive than several other local gyms, which are far cleaner, have more equipment, have better AC, and have more helpful staff. They also require you to cancel membership at least 30 days in advance, which means when you want to cancel, they will squeeze another billing cycle out of you, which comes off as very predatory. I joined because it is close to UCSD graduate housing, but now I realize why no other grad students work out there.

0 star for accounting and how they made up stories for their mistake. If you do not want to see a surprising charge of a few hundred dollars on your credit card every single month for 6 month in a roll. A new trick each time. Just DO NOT go to this JCC. No one cares to make it right.

I'll start with the positives: 1) Membership is worth it to me for the fitness center alone. The price is pretty reasonable and the fitness center is small but nice. It isn't an intimidating place and it usually isn't difficult to get access to the equipment I want to use. 2) There are occassionally interesting Jewish cultural events, though not as many as one would expect for a Jewish Community Center. Now the negatives: 1) Security protocols are dangerously flawed. I feel that it is truly a disaster waiting to happen. The "security" is really just security theater. I don't want to get into the specific weaknesses because I am truly afraid that someone might exploit them, but I have brought these issues up repeatedly with security staff, the head of security, and the CEO of Lawrence Family JCC and have never received a legitimate response and, far worse, no action has been taken to address the serious issues. It seems that they are just waiting for a disaster to happen before taking the issue seriously. This is truly irresponsible and disturbing for a Jewish institution in the current climate we are living in. 2) Fitness/recreation events that I sign up for and show up for are regularly cancelled without any prior notice. We only find out after we take time out of our schedules, drive to the JCC, and wait around. This demonstrates incompetence and a lack of respect for members. 3) The tennis courts can only be reserved 24 hours or less in advance, which makes coordination with other players and appropriate scheduling nearly impossible. I make arrangements with others a week in advance to play at a specific time that fits all of our schedules, and then it turns out that I can't get a court when I call exactly 24 hours in advance because other people called a half hour earlier to reserve the courts a half hour before the time I have arranged with friends to play. It is also unacceptable that 2 of the 4 courts are permanently rented to a for-profit tennis lesson company, and the employees of that company also will not leave me alone after I have made it very clear that I am not interested in their services. 4) The Lawrence Family JCC's computer system for reserving tickets for events routinely does not work, saying that events are sold out when they are nowhere near sold out. I have to go to Guest Services to do what I should be able to do online. Overall, the Lawrence Family JCC is incompetently run. An institution with such strong funding and active membership should be doing so much better. Two stars is extremely generous, but the fitness center compels me to give it more than the minimum one star.

I come here to workout and I like that it is a real gym without people chatting or flirting with each other. The equipment is decent and the olympic sized pool is a huge draw for lap swimming. Tennis courts are great too. My issue is with the organization and cleanliness of the gym. Spray bottles with disinfectant are located throughout the gym which I suppose members are supposed to use to wipe down the equipment but they only provide a nasty rag to do that with. I don't even want to touch it and apparently neither does anyone else because I have never seen a single person in the gym use the spray bottles and provided "rag". That means the gym equipment is not cleaned between users. YUCK! I suppose one could use the complimentary towels that are provided to wipe down equipment but on several of my most recent visits, they were out of clean towels. Plus these towels are meant to use on our faces and bodies, not on equipment with chemical cleaners. At my home, I separate my bath towels from my cleaning towels because of the toxic chemicals. So, the last time I wiped down a machine before I used it, (with a bunch of paper towels), I received dirty looks from a trainer nearby who sadly had to inhale the toxic chemicals that were released as I sprayed the provided cleaner. I felt bad for her but NO WAY do I want to get ill from unsanitary equipment! I understand this is a community center and not a luxury gym, so I would never complain about the design or other trivial items. Please, just get the sanitation under control, provide a better way for members to regularly wipe down their equipment and I will give my JCC the 5 stars it really deserves. It would make me very happy to update this review once positive steps are implemented to solve these issues.

The name of this park is very misleading, it is not a city park. A group of friends and I, who were playing soccer, were kicked out of this park by the employees of the neighboring Jewish community center because it belongs to them and not to the city.