Politics & Government
Give Your Views On Centennial Pool's Future
Park Ridge Park District officials say the dated Centennial Pool is ready for a revamp. The district will be holding public hearings soon to discuss what residents want.
Park Ridge Park District officials say the 58-year-old is due for a makeover. They plan to invite district residents (in Park Ridge and the southwest part of Niles) to public hearings in coming weeks.
Centennial Pool is on Western, just south of Touhy, in Park Ridge.
Officials haven't picked the exact dates yet, but the hearings are expected to be sometime in September or October, said Board President Rick Biagi, who is a member of the Centennial Pool Task Force, a newly-formed group made up of district board members and staff.
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Earlier:
While the pool is safe to swim in, it's past its prime not just in usefulness but also in function, said Jim O'Brien, a board member, who is also a member of the task force.
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Biagi said the facility's two pools, located at 100 S. Western Ave., are leaking and they have mechanical problems, Biagi said.
"It's not that we want to do this, it's that we have to," Biagi said.
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The district will not ask the residents for a tax increase via a referendum question on a ballot to pay for a new facility--which could cost as much as $6.3 million, said Gayle Mountcastle, the district's executive director. The district will pay for it out its of capital expenditures fund, she said.
Currently, the facility consists of two pools and a wading pool. Both of the pools are six lanes, totally about 25 yards in length each. In one pool, the maximum depth is 5 feet. The other pool features two spring boards, according to district officials.
The newly-built wading pool has zero-depth entry, tot slide, and interactive spray features. The district revamped the facility's wading pool recently so that will not be part of the new project, district officials said.
The district will be considering whether to put in a lazy river, zero-depth entries and water slides at the pool facility, he said.
The district conducted a survey last year about what residents would like at Centennial Pool and found that the No. 1 request was a lazy river, followed by a slide and then a zero-depth pool, Mountcastle said.
If all goes as planned, the new Centennial pool will open in 2015, Mountcastle said.
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