The Frankfort City Council on Monday night unanimously approved using what is left in the current TPA Park pool budget to start on a design for a new pool.
“The appropriation tonight was existing dollars within the pool budget,” said Frankfort Parks Superintendent Travis Sheets. “It was intended for contractual services for the coming season to operate the pool. In a sense, what the City Council did was give us permission to use it for design work for a new facility.”
Funds currently in that budget is $131,000.
Kyle Lueken of HWC Engineering, who had presented two proposed options at a community forum at the Community Schools of Frankfort Administration Building back in January, presented a newer version of a proposed pool at a recent city council meeting at a cost of $9.9 million.
After a report from the finance committee that consisted of councilmen Eric Woods, Jim Moyer and Steve Beardsley, a consensus was reached that a new pool was the best option rather than try to fix or rebuild the current pool.
Sheets talks about what is the next step.
“There’s some action that needs to be taken by the Board of Works,” said Sheets. “We’ll enter in contractually with HWC Engineering and should know a lot more here in the next couple of weeks.”
A survey conducted last year showed people had several thoughts on what could be incorporated into a new pool. The top five items included a Lazy River concept followed by water slides, a toddler zone, water play structures and a zero depth or beach entry point.
Sheets said the new pool would be built on the site of the current pool.
“The plan would be to demolish the pool that’s there,” said Sheets. “We would keep the historical bathhouse. Basically it would be the footprint and we would enlarge the footprint of the existing pool a little bit for the apparatuses, the Lazy River and such.”
The current pool is not expected to be open this coming summer and probably most of 2020, as well.