Ventana Ranch Community Center

While technically this is called the Ventana Ranch Pool & Community Center, it’s really just the Ventana Ranch Pool. The «community center» isn’t actually a community center at all. It’s only accessible from the pool area, and is really just a small building built big enough to house the locker rooms, hold what little equipment the pool monitors might need, and store pool toys the kids that come here can use while they’re swimming. Oh, and it serves as a space to use for the (monthly/​quarterly?) homeowners association meetings.
The pool itself isn’t very large, probably about ¾ the size of your typical public pool, but since it’s only for Ventana Ranch residents, it never gets super busy, and one typically has plenty of room to swim and hang out in. It’s clean, and relatively well maintained, but the water is so cold that, from my viewpoint, it’s virtually unusable for more than a few minutes at a time, even on the hottest of summer days. Now, given that the average day finds plenty of people (mostly kids) in the pool swimming around, obviously not everyone feels the same way, but consider this my swimmer beware sort of review, and get out of it what you will. :-) I actually find the water temperature to be a bit of a mystery, because while it was super cold like this the few times we came here last summer (2013), there were also a few times we were here earlier this summer (2014), and the water temp was perfect then. There was even a time when we came to swim this year, and the water was (almost) *too* warm. However, of all the times we’ve been here, the water has been cold far more than it’s been warm.
The locker rooms are small, and a little stinky, but clean, and more than adequate for the size of the pool and the number of swimmers generally present. I suspect the smell is largely due to the smallness of the space, and the fact that the locker rooms are basically outside. There’s a kiddie pool fenced off in a small enclosed area separate from the rest of the pool, and even though the main pool is very big, or busy, it’s nice for parents of small children to have a dedicated space they can take their kiddos to if they want to.
There are no diving boards, water slides, or any of that other fancy schmancy pool stuff, but there are plenty of chairs, a few tables, and even a nice grassy area with a couple good sized trees providing lots of shade right outside the gate, just in front of the pool. This makes the grass the perfect place for having a picnic lunch with the fam before, after, or even during your swim session. The pool is free to use, but as I mentioned above, it’s for VR residents only, and you need a key/​swipe card to get in the gate (obtained by going to the office for the the property mgmt co, and showing them an ID, and some sort of other proof of VR residency).
Overall, I’d probably give the VR Pool 3.5 stars, but since Unilocal won’t let me go in .5 star increments, I feel like it deserves rounding up to 4 stars more than it does rounding down to 3. If you live in VR, the pool is a nice (free!) summer perk to have. If you don’t live out here, well, maybe you should! :-)