NORTHGLENN —The city’s recreation center pool is closed until the end of September while it undergoes repairs that will help maintain the temperature of the water as well as improve maintenance costs and appearance of the 40-year-old pool facility.
In the meantime, all swimming classes and free swims have been moved to the city’s outdoor Kiwanis Pool at 550 Garland Drive.
Most of the August and September pool classes are water fitness for seniors, and for many of those students, the completion deadline of Sept. 28 for the indoor pool renovation is pretty important.
“I get cold really easily, so I hope it stays nice through September,” said Westminster resident Kathy Kalen, 68. “It’s nice to be outside sometimes, though. I’m told that we’ll just work out in the grass if it gets too cold before it reopens.”
Kalen does drop-in Arthritis Aquatics classes in Northglenn twice a week, and she said she’s excited that the city is upgrading the recreation center pool, mainly so that the water temperature can finally remain stable. Outdated equipment has made managing the system a challenge for the city’s recreation staff, who sometimes pumped cold or warm water into the pool to get the feel right.
“I could go into that pool at any given day and it would be down a degree or two or three degrees from what it was the day before, or up two or three,” said Doreen Mercer, an aquatics fitness instructor who has taught as many as 12 classes a week in Northglenn for nearly 19 years. “It takes a while to bring the temperature back up, and that’s difficult for seniors who have arthritis. A degree or two in the air is nothing, but in the water, one degree makes a big difference.”
The $300,000 project began the first week of August. Half of the project is funded through an Adams County Open Space grant. Renovations to the pool include replacement of the pool liner, filtration tank, drainage system and pool boiler, as well as repairs to the aluminum shell and the resurfacing of the deck.
“The pool has never been renovated to this degree,” said Amanda Peterson, director of Parks, Recreation and Cultural Service in Northglenn. “The last major improvement was the installation of the liner approximately 20 years ago.”
The pool renovation comes on the heels of a that wrapped up earlier this year. The new locker rooms have private showers, two new family locker rooms, pool room entrances and new plumbing and fixtures.
All maintenance to the Northglenn Recreation Center, which was built in 1975, is being done instead of a complete facility replacement, which the city was planning for 2008, but subsequently abandoned.
Today, the city is exploring the idea of a new recreation center as part of its .
“When we made a determination to not move forward in replacement in 2008, we have made some improvements to this facility’s functionality space for the public,” Peterson said during a public meeting earlier this year. “Council would like to go forward with a new facility still on this site so that we can serve those needs differently.”
The recreation center at 11801 Community Center Drive is 40,500 square feet right now. It includes the senior center and the city’s theater, as well. A space needs assessment revealed that the center could use about 42,200 extra square feet, bringing it to nearly 83,000 square feet.
There are no actual plans at this time to build a new recreation center, but the idea of creating a two-level facility is being mulled by council and the city’s developer for the civic center campus project, MIG, Inc.
“The recommendation is to retain the recreation center, senior center and theater on site,” Jay Renkens, director of Denver area operations at MIG said during a presentation to City Council last month. “They’re basically the components of a community center. They could be in conjunction with each other in one, single building, or perhaps broken apart.”
Officials with MIG and Northglenn estimate a more concrete plan, with or without a new recreation center, coming in early 2016.
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Mmitchelldp
