Parks and Rec Director Tony Oligney-Estill presented to the City Council Monday the dire shape of the Hawthorne Recreational Facility.
The City Council will have difficult decisions to make to keep indoor aquatics programming for the city, but Parks and Rec staff say Hawthorne should be closed after May 2022.
Parks and Rec Director Tony Oligney-Estill says the other part of his recommendation would be putting an all-weather dome over Lakeside.
These are only recommendations and final decisions would have to be made by the Council.
The estimated cost for the dome is $2 million, but it would be one location maintained instead of two like now.
Oligney-Estill says there are a lot of good reasons to plan for a dome including reduced maintenance costs.
“..also providing much more entertaining, more functional indoor aquatic space for the general community,” Oligney-Estill says.
“I know there are several challenges to doing something like that including the costs, although there are grants available for about half of that.”
However, if the pool’s water heater isn’t replaced now then the pool will have to be closed when the weather gets cold.
The cost to fix the entire pool is $2 million, but the city administration worries that the cost will just be the beginning for an aging building.
Thompson says the city doesn’t have the money for a dome right now either, but the benefit of that investment would be getting rid of the lingering cost of operating an old pool.
He says it is very much the city’s intent to keep providing indoor aquatic programs for residents.
Alderman Bradley Hix says closing the pool is probably the “fiscally prudent thing to do.”
