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De Pere residents get first look at proposed pools

By Melinda Anne Roberts
Correspondent

DE PERE – Residents were invited to an open house Monday, March 18, to view and provide feedback on the design options for new pools at Legion and VFW parks.

“What we’ve developed is two options at both locations,” said Patrick Skalecki, president of GRAEF, the city’s general engineering design consultant. “The park board has given us some direction based on the public feedback in January.”

Base plans at each location include wanted amenities the community provided, like three different diving boards, an activity area, a tot area, lounge chairs, concessions and shade structures.

“Even though the plans look different and can be configured differently, they all have the same base features,” said Skalecki.

The plans also reflect feedback about what not to have and also provide some alternative optional features.

Options at each location include one pool versus two pools, a mechanical wing versus a separate mechanical building, a drop slide (with a depth of 12 feet), a climbing wall, indoor and outdoor concessions and seating.

“The building configurations are slightly different mainly because of that mechanical wing,” said Skalecki. “Having two pools requires multiple filtration systems, which causes added mechanical costs to the project.”

Skalecki said the advantage of two pools is “you can close one pool and keep the other one open. With just one pool, everything gets shut down.”

The square footage is also slightly larger with the two pools (by about 1,000 feet), which affects the number of lifeguards.

“As pools get larger you have more activities and you’re going to need other dedicated lifeguards for that,” Skalecki said.

The base plan’s total estimated project cost at Legion Park is $6,255,000. The alternate plan estimate is $6.94 million The base plan’s total estimated project cost at VFW Park is $6,009,000. The alternate plan estimate is $7.9 million.

De Pere residents passed a referendum in November 2018 approving construction of the two new pool facilities.

Visitors were asked to fill out a comment sheet and provide input on what they did and did not like about the conceptual designs and possible amenities.

The feedback will be presented at the park board meeting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, March 21, at city hall.

The job of the park board is to take the feedback and turn the two designs from VFW and Legion “and make them into one,” said Marty Kosobucki, director of Parks, Recreation and Forestry.

“So that’s why tonight is important to get the community’s input to see what they like and what they don’t like,” Kosobucki said.

The hope is to have VFW up and running by 2020, but 2021 for VFW is probably more realistic, he said.

Once VFW is up and running, Kosobucki said work will begin on the Legion pool.

“Legion will continue to be open, provided everything continues to run and that it doesn’t blow up like what happened at the VFW pool,” said Kosobucki, referring to the $800,000 in damage that occurred at VFW when the deep well lifted out of the ground by as much as 18 inches as the pool was being drained at the end of the 2018 season.

Both pools were constructed in the early 1970s, “so anything can go wrong at Legion,” he said.

“We haven’t gotten into the technical design yet, but we’re hoping there’s new technology for building pools in this environment,” said Kosobucki, “and that we can do things that will help with the maintenance of the pools.”

He said more items related to sustainability could also be added to the projects once plans progress.

“We’re at the conceptual design phase,” said Kosobucki. “Once the conceptual designs are finalized, then we’re going to switch gears right away and go into technical design mode.”

Water Technology, Inc., headquartered in Beaver Dam, is handling specialty design for the pools.

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