By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
City officials are currently seeking options of how to renovate and remodel the currently closed lap pool at the aquatic park in St. Joseph.
Originally, the city designated eight million dollars of capital improvement money towards the project.
City Manager Bryan Carter says though the city began to consider the cost of maintaining an outdoor pool.
"When it came time to look at that, the decision was made that eight million dollars on something that's used three months a year because it's an outdoor pool has a limited availability for its season, eight million dollars was a lot of money," Carter tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr.
Carter says the city is currently forming a long-term plan, that could potentially end with a new indoor pool facility.
While St. Joseph city officials are formulating a plan of what to do with the old Aquatic Park lap pool there is a plan in the short term.
The city has had an agreement with Missouri Western State University since 2014 for limited use of its indoor pool.
Carter says the city is currently working to shift ownership of the pool though to the city and its aquatic manager
"Where we could keep it open longer hours, we could keep it open more days, possibly keep it open through some of the school closures, so when the school closes the pool closes, we could keep it open through that," Carter says. "We've worked with Missouri Western, they're very receptive to doing that, we're doing some preliminary due diligence now."
Carter says the city currently needs to evaluate the long-term viability of the Missouri Western option to see if it fits the city long term plan.
Carter says the city is working on a long-term plan with dreams of building a new indoor pool facility.
"What we know is an indoor facility is going to cost, we've heard as low as $20 million in money from a few years ago, which is a whole different thing from money from today," Carter explains. "We're hearing today $25 to $30 million, of course you can't build a $25 million pool with $8 million."
Carter says the city is evaluating many different options for a lap pool facility in St. Joseph.