Pool construction pushback sparks changes

PALMER — Recreation officials are heading back to the drawing board after a heated meeting Oct. 11 on upcoming changes to the Borough’s two high school pools.

At issue are planned major renovations to the Palmer and Wasilla High School pools that aim to bring the facilities up to current code, while also reconfiguring their set-ups.

The designs presented at the Oct. 11 meeting were developed with community input in 2012 and 2013 but shelved when the Borough didn’t have the cash to do the work, said Hugh Leslie, the Borough’s parks and recreation manager. When voters passed a $22 million recreation bond last year, in part to fund the pool upgrades, those plans were dusted off.

The Wasilla High School pool currently has a lap swim area adjacent to a deep end used for diving and water exercise. The Palmer High School pool contains a shallow area where lessons can be held adjacent to an area for lap swimming and diving. A moveable bulkhead separates the diving and lap swim areas.

The new plans would instead create two completely separate pools at both facilities — a shallow, warmer pool for therapy and swim lesson use, and a deep pool kept at cooler temperatures for lap swim and diving use, Leslie said. The Wasilla pool would also be reconfigured to 25 yards, making it useable for swim competitions.

But a crowd of pool users, many of them senior citizens, told officials at the public meeting that the plans create problems, including making it more difficult for older users to access the deep end at Wasilla. They also worried the reconfiguration will create potential pool use traffic jams as multiple user types — divers, lap swimmers, children and water aerobics or water runners — vie for pool time.

“Something needs to be done, because at least we’ve got a halfway decent facility now,” said Dale Bond, who regularly exercises in the Wasilla pool. “They made no provisions for the senior citizens.”

Bond is part of a group of Wasilla pool users who attended the meeting. He said officials did not seek enough public input before drawing up the design — or if they did, they did it in a way that no one would notice.

“You come into the pool, they have the bulletin board off the side, and who even looks at it?” he said. “You get in there, you pay your money and you go into the pool.”

District 2 Assemblyman Matthew Beck, whose area includes the Palmer pool, said the Borough did publicize the designs and held a variety of input meetings over many years.

“They did a whole bunch of listening sessions, and I remember for a long time, for several months, at the Palmer pool there was a stack of papers and there was a box where you could fill out comments,” Beck said. “These people are coming in at the 11th hour.”

Still, Leslie said, the users’ concerns have been heard, and the architects have integrated them into a series of new, preliminary “tissue paper” designs.

“We are absolutely taking what they said to heart; we’re not discounting anything they said,” he said. “That was the message I tried to get out last week.”

Leslie said those redesigned plans will be run by his staff to make sure they don’t raise any new problems, and then presented to the public at the next plans meeting in late November.

The upcoming changes to the pools aren’t just to size and design. Among the upgrades are plans to replace Palmer’s HVAC system, renovate the 1980s era pool pipes at both locations and fix the in-pool lighting that is no longer up to code. Locker room upgrades will also offer better shower privacy that Leslie hopes will encourage users to rinse thoroughly before getting in the pool.

The Wasilla pool construction is scheduled to start this spring and last about a year, Leslie said. The Palmer pool construction will start once the Wasilla pool is completed. Wasilla’s pool is receiving upgrades first, he said, so the schools’ swim teams continue to have a local place to host meets.