The Crookston Community Pool will reopen on Tuesday for the first time since early this spring. Pool Manager Cody Brekken said the pool will have a limited schedule of hours as they adjust to operating under COVID-19 procedures. “We’ll be opening up Tuesday, July 21,” said Brekken. “It will be a limited schedule to start. We’ll go back to our Lap Swim Monday through Friday 6-9 a.m., Aqua Exercise 9-10 a.m. So, those will be roughly unaffected as far as time. But then, we’ll only do our afternoon summer open swim. We’ll go Monday to Friday from noon to 3 p.m. for those afternoon open swims. We’ll bring evening stuff back eventually once we’re confident and competent in enforcing some of these regulations and getting some more of my 18-year-olds back to be supervisors. That evening schedule will come back.”
Pool Capacity will be limited to 60 swimmers, with a limit of 100 people permitted in the building said, Brekken. “We’ll do the same thing as a lot of the businesses,” said Brekken. “We’ll have signage everywhere promoting the social or physical distancing everywhere. We’ll remind of proper hygiene, those type of things. One thing that will affect that pool directly is say birthday parties. We usually accommodate a lot of birthday parties. We won’t be having those for the time being. And our pool capacity will drop to 50 percent. Usually, with our guard schedule, we allow 120 swimmers at one time, which is pretty steep. We’ll allow 60 at this time, which we feel we can confidently maintain. For building, we won’t be able to have more than 100 people in the building at a time. We’ll monitor that and make sure we don’t hit those numbers. We have a full preparedness plan that coincides with the Park and Rec preparedness plan. That will be available at the pool to see.”
The pool will reopen with new backstroke flags, signage, drinking fountains, and showers. Brekken said a water softener will also be added soon to preserve the showerheads. “During the downtime, we’ve done quite a bit,” said Brekken. “We’ve painted all the door and window trim in the building. We waxed all the floors, did our whole yearly maintenance stuff. We’ve updated the signage that’s in the pool area for more permanent signage in there. We have new showers that were a big purchase for us that we’re super excited about as well as drinking fountains both in the pool area and one in the lobby with a bottle filler. We’ll also be getting a water softener within the next couple of weeks that will be great for the new showerheads. We’ve also added new backstroke flags in the pool area to spiff that up. I want to thank the staff that have helped set up all that stuff in the time being. It’s been awesome.”
There are currently no swim lessons scheduled, but Brekken said that’s on his radar to try to figure out by the end of the month. “We’ll see what’s feasible and what’s not as far as sneaking in some swimming lessons toward the tail end of July,” said Brekken. “That’s kind of on my radar right now, and we’ll see what we can do to accommodate that right now. If not, some sort of smaller group or individual lessons for the time being.”
Pool Hours:
Lap Swim Monday-Friday 6-9 a.m.
Aqua Exercise Monday-Friday 9-10 a.m.
Open Swim Monday-Friday noon-3 p.m.
