Between 30 and 35 people turned out for a community forum of the TPA Park Pool Feasibility Study Thursday night at the Community Schools of Frankfort Administration Building. HWC Engineering presented the results of the study and ideas from the Feasibility Committee.
The study showed that 96 percent of the almost 700 respondents were from Clinton County or Frankfort, 23 percent used the pool on a daily or weekly basis and 76 percent strongly support renovation or expansion of the current pool.
“I think there is a lot of genuine interest here in Clinton County,” said Frankfort Parks Superintendent Travis Sheets. “The pool has been an amenity for many years. It’s just been a part of Frankfort’s history.”
Sheets said this the third version of the pool and it has problems.
“The study that came back showed the deficiencies with the pool we have right now,” said Sheets. “We’re not able to necessarily use what we have. It all needs to be taken out and we have to start over.”
The study 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.
Two concepts were presented.
“One is a little more and that is to put back a pool the size that we have versus diversifying that footprint just a bit with open water concepts and replacing part of the pool with water features,” said Sheets.
Cost of the smaller concept would be $8 to $9 million with the larger size being $10 million.
“The fact of the matter is we have an old, a very tired pool,” said Frankfort Mayor Chris McBarnes. “We’re at the point now that even smaller fixes wouldn’t work. We either have to rebuild our existing pool or retool it and add some additional amenities that people would like to see.”
However, no matter what is done, the current pool will not be open this coming summer.
“Structurally, it’s not safe,” said McBarnes. “There is now a large void underneath the northeast end of the pool where the diving well comes up and goes into a little bit of shallower water. We’d be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars, actually millions of dollars, to repair it.”
Design will take four to six months, bidding will be another month and construction will take a year.
“We still have some hoops to jump through and there needs to be a lot of people on board,” said Sheets. “This is going to be a few months process.”