The Aquatic Center, with three pools and a pool house, all
designed to delight or instruct, continued its way to fruition last
week when the City Council approved the schematic design by ELS
Architects. Council authorized the design development and
construction document phase to begin as well.
The Aquatic Center, with three pools and a pool house, all designed to delight or instruct, continued its way to fruition last week when the City Council approved the schematic design by ELS Architects. Council authorized the design development and construction document phase to begin as well.
The council/redevelopment agency will hold a workshop Wednesday, possibly realloting the RDA funds reserved for future capital projects.
If all goes well, the aquatic center at Condit and Barrett Avenues, should open for business by Memorial Day in 2004 and cost upwards of $11 million.
A wrinkle, however, appeared in the plans for the 50-meter competition pool that could alter the center’s viability as a venue for national-level swim competition.
As it is now designed, the pool, which has always been referred to as exclusively devoted to competition and practice – and not recreation – has only a 4.5-foot depth at the shallow end. Aquatics fans present requested that the shallow end be deepened to two meters (or 7 feet) because that depth is best for competition swimming.
Two other pools are marked for recreational swimming and lessons.
“We can host three water polo games at once (one at the Live Oak High School pool and two at the center) if the pool is two meters deep,” said John Rick, president of the Morgan Hill Aquatic Foundation. The MHAF has followed the center’s development avidly, helping with design ideas and raising more than $750,000 toward building costs.
He also pointed out that a deeper pool is a faster pool.
“A two-meter depth is needed to host tournaments up to the national level,” he said. It would not meet, nor was it ever intended to meet, international or Olympic standards, Rick said.
Mayor Dennis Kennedy, a swimmer who is on the aquatic subcommittee, said a 7-foot deep shallow ended pool might discourage people from using the pool for recreation.
“I don’t want to limit recreational use of the pool,” he said.
“The first purpose of the center was to have a place for competition swimming in South County,” said Geno Acevedo, another swimming enthusiast and water polo player. “The recreational pool was added later for its revenue possibilities. Large (competition) events bring people to town who stay in hotels, shop in stores and eat in restaurants.”
Such tourists would benefit the business community where visitors to the center would help allay the center’s operation and maintenance costs, Acevedo said.
Council will consider the 50-meter pool’s depth at a future meeting.
Kennedy said the council will focus carefully on the center’s uses, mentioning that the City of Monterey has agreements with local hotels to send guests to that city’s large and successful recreation center.
“They want to do this,” Kennedy said of local hotel owners he has discussed the subject with. He also mentioned S.C.U.B.A. training and Gavilan College’s rehabilitative swimming program as potential revenue sources.
As with all other city-owned public facilities, Redevelopment Agency money can be used to cover construction costs but not those of maintenance and operation. Centers must pay for themselves.
Council appears to be in favor of adding a second slide to the recreation pool – for which enlarging the pool by one-third is necessary – and of adding amenities to the pool house to widen food concession possibilities.
“I’m really intent on the whole revenue thing,” said Councilman Steve Tate. “I’m in favor of spending capital costs to increase revenue dollars later on.”
The RDA workshop, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, will be open to the public. Council will discuss re-alloting the $187 million in RDA funds. Several early projects – the community center, playhouse and aquatic center, among others – have cost considerably more than expected – or previously alloted for.
Councilwoman Hedy Chang, in particular, has suggested selling the Gunderson property on Edmundson Avenue and moving a reduced indoor recreation center to Condit Avenue, location of the aquatic center and soccer fields.
