The City of Crookston Ways and Means committee met on Monday night after the City Council meeting to discuss the Crookston Community Pool. The discussion was had after a study said that the City should put over $1 million dollars into the facility to get it to where it should be.
The pool had a water main break that flooded the basement with about three to four feet of water. After the mess was cleaned up, the City found out that two heaters were in need of repair. The repairs would be in the ballpark of $40,000. After a long discussion and hearing from pool supporters, city council members made a motion to make the $40,000 in repairs and also contact an HVAC expert to look at the HVAC system and check the air quality, and also hire a structural engineer to do a study on the building that has brick eroding away and rust and other issues affecting the roof. “A group of citizens has come forward and said we want the pool open, and they were given information about what that would cost,” said City Administrator Corky Reynolds. “After a very thorough conversation, the council reached unanimity to seek out options to purchase the mechanisms to allow the pool to open and to employ an HVAC engineer to check the air quality and a structural engineer to do the additional testing that our feasibility study recommended.”
The purpose of hiring an HVAC engineer and a structural engineer is to find out what kind of shape the pool is in, according to Reynolds. “The feasibility report that was delivered to us a couple of months ago said we think this is what it would cost, and we think these are the problems, but to be sure, get the specialist to analyze the air quality and the actual physical building itself to see how bad the degradation and the spoilage that has occurred.”
Several options on what they could do with the pool were given by City Administrator Corky Reynolds.
1. Close the pool
2. Close the pool and fill in the pool and use the building for other things.
3. Knock down the pool and build a new one
4. Close the pool, knock it down, and build an outdoor pool
5. Have a joint powers agreement with the school district and build a new pool attached to the high school.
6. Fix up the pool and keep it open.
The city will fix the heaters to get the pool open again and will wait to find out what the structural engineer and the HVAC specialist find before moving forward with other repairs or pool decisions.
