Companies make pitches to help Charles City make choices and design new or refurbished pool

By Bob Steenson, bsteenson@charlescitypress.com

The Charles City Parks and Recreation Board has for several years been considering what to do about the municipal swimming pool at Lions Park Field – now more than 30 years old and showing its age.

The options to keep an outdoor swimming pool in town include repairing it – which is being done piecemeal every year now – doing a major refurbishment, possibly with new amenities, or replacing it with an entirely new aquatic center, either at the current location or somewhere else.

Dreams of additional water slides, lazy rivers, splash pads, water basketball, climbing walls and even the potential for an indoor-outdoor facility have been mentioned.

And hovering over all those dreams and decisions are costs, likely in the millions or many millions of dollars for anything more than cosmetic repairs, and questions concerning where that money would come from.

To make decisions on those options, the Parks & Rec Board members will need some help, and the board spent a little more than a hour each on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons this week listening to two companies make their pitches as to why they would be the best choice to offer that guidance.

On Wednesday the board heard from JEO Consulting Group of Ankeny. On Thursday the presentation was by Burbach Aquatics Inc. of Platteville, Wisconsin.

Both groups went through the process of how they would work with the board and others to come up with proposals that best fit the current and future needs of the community, how they would help build support for a project and help look for funding, and ultimately how they would design the project  and go through the bidding and construction process.

The presentations were similar in many ways, with the representatives of each company lauding their longevity and experience and their expertise in the various steps that would need to be gone through.

Roger Schamberger, business development director with Burbach, stressed the point that the company he represents does only aquatic centers, and has been doing so for 44 years.

Matt Mardesen, client manager with JEO, noted his company has been in business for 85 years and has a team dedicated to aquatics, but also consults in several other areas from which the company’s experience and experts can be drawn if needed.

Both presentations emphasized the closeness with which the company would work with the Parks & Rec Board and the community to make sure the decisions and the designs they came up with would be what the community wants, and both presentations were accompanied by glossy posters showing some of the many projects each company has completed in Iowa and around the Midwest.

The representatives from Burbach, on Thursday, spent some time talking about the possibility of refurbishing the existing pool.

Duane Wepking, director of aquatic engineering at Burbach, said he had toured the pool Thursday afternoon and it looks like refurbishment may be a realistic option.

He said when the pool opened in 1991, it was “cutting edge” with its water slide and zero-depth entry, but now it needed to “bring some excitement back.”

Whether or not the pool can be refurbished will depend on the condition of the concrete in what the industry calls the vessel – the concrete that contains the water that makes up the pool.

Wepking said making that determination will require a much more in-depth, 32-step evaluation, possibly even bringing in a materials testing firm if things like core samples are needed.

Wepking said they would come up with a comprehensive report that shows likely renovation costs and compares those to the costs of new construction.

Schamberger said the baseline they use for renovations is, “Can it be made usable for another 25 years?”

Whereas the Burbach team spent more time on the construction process of renovating or replacing a pool and why the pools they design are the best in the business, meant to last at least 50 years, the JEO team spent more time on the process it goes through to work with the Parks & Rec Board and the community to come up with possible designs, refine them and raise funds, and it also spent some time asking members of the board what their concerns are.

The JEO team also spent some time talking about the possibility of locating a new pool near Wildwood Golf Course, along Highway 14 where two baseball diamonds are located. That would allow them to construct one new building that could serve as the bathhouse for the aquatic center as well as the clubhouse for the golf course, replacing an existing clubhouse that itself is in need of major repairs and may be beyond saving.

The pool and the golf course could share concessions space, locker rooms and parking, and it could bring in a whole other group of people who might be more interested in golfing than swimming who would support the project, Mardesen said.

Charles City Parks and Recreation Department Director Tyler Mitchell said the board members would be discussing the proposals at the next board meeting, at 5 p.m. Wednesday, June 15, and could make a decision whether to hire either company at that time.

Mitchell had sent out a request for qualifications to pool design and construction companies in April and five companies responded. After going through the written proposals from each company, board members had agreed to bring in JEO and Burbach for in-person presentations.