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At their Tuesday night Longmont City Council Study Session, council heard an update from Recreation and Golf Services Manager Jeff Friesner on the proposed pool and ice facility in Longmont.
The proposed idea recommended through Phases 1 and 2 of the feasibility study for the project is a 91,800 sq. foot facility. This would include a 50-meter, 10-lane competitive pool, a leisure pool, and a single sheet of ice that would meet the National Hockey League’s specifications. The total cost for the feasibility study was $73,255.
The updated construction costs for a facility like this would be $42,420,000, with annual operating costs of $2.69 million.
There was a lot of deliberation over this proposal between council and city staff. Council bounced around several ideas pertaining to recreation facilities in Longmont, and discussed their commitment to past Longmont masterplans. A past Longmont master plan included in it a recreation facility that would eventually be built in the Southwest part of Longmont.
Some members of
Council Member Dr. Tim Waters said, “I’ve said this before, and I’m going to say it again tonight. It seems to be okay with the school district to be in the football field management business, and the gymnasium management business, and the tennis court management business, and the soccer field management business, and baseball, and on and on. But they don’t want to be in the business of managing these kind of facilities, and I’m not certain why this differs given that you still want to put interscholastic athletic programs in it.”
Council Member Joan Peck remarked on the idea of a 10-lane competition pool at the center. “Who is competing in our city? It is the swim teams from the school district. I don’t know where we’re going to get 10 lanes of competition if we don’t use the competitors in our city, which is the school district. So that is the point, for me, for having a robust partnership with them.”
“This is more of an update because we need to get finalized details before we would bring something forward, and so we changed it so that we’re not asking to put it on the ballot, this is more of an update to say here it is,” said City Manager Harold Dominguez. “What we definitely wanted to get were comments and suggestions about this so that we can get a sense of how all of these pieces could come together.”
Council directed staff to poll the public on the level of public support for the aquatic ice center and ice rink facility (and they are also gauging public support on a countywide housing tax as well). They also directed staff to continue discussing lease terms with the school district, with the direction that they use any and all efforts to get those deliberations concluded by the end of April.
