Discussions from Tuesday night’s meeting of the Covington City Commission indicate that the city will likely close Goebel Park Pool for the 2024 season due to cost burdens associated with repairs and operations.
Coupled with the pool’s scheduled final closure in 2025 due to its proximity to Brent Spence Corridor construction, Tuesday’s discussion signals the pool’s effective end.
“There’s considerable operating costs associated with the pool,” said Brandon Holmes, Covington’s neighborhood services director. “Given the budget constraints, we thought it’d be prudent to close the pool now.”
The discussion proceeded from a proposal to renew the city’s contract with Swimsafe Pool Management, Inc. to manage aquatic facilities at Randolph Park Pool and the Covington Water Park in Latonia for the 2024 summer season. Swimsafe provides various operational services for the city’s aquatic facilities, and the new contract explicitly excises operations for Goebel Park Pool. The renewal was placed on the consent agenda for next week, meaning it will likely pass.
Holmes outlined the pool’s problems to the commissioners, namely its foundation problems and leaks.
“So we’re talking about 450,000-gallon pool, and we’re adding about 50,000 gallons per week” to address the leaks, Holmes said.
As a point of clarity, Mayor Joe Meyer asked, “We would have to invest several-hundred thousand dollars into into Goebel Pool to keep it open so we can close it in two years?”
Holmes said this was correct.
“We’re talking hundreds of thousands of dollars to that facility this year,” Holmes said.
It would take about half a million dollars to repair the pool, according to a recent announcement from the city.
At the legislative meeting last week, the commission voted to enter into an updated agreement with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet whereby the cabinet would reimburse the city for the loss of the pool and other land in Goebel Park due to the Brent Spence construction. The cabinet agreed to give $1.3 million to the city to fund a replacement pool and $100,000 to update the city’s master parks plan.
Ideally, the money could be used to furnish a new aquatic facility of some kind, whether that’s a new pool, splash pad or something similar. Conversations with contractors who specialize in pool construction, however, suggest the $1.3 million would likely not be enough.
An Olympic-sized swimming pool with a depth of two meters, or about 7 feet, holds about 660,000 gallons of water, according to World Aquatics, the international sports regulatory federation recognized by the International Olympic Committee. This is larger than Goebel Park’s rough 450,000 gallons, but it serves as good go-to for measuring costs.
A representative from Brandstetter Carroll, a design and engineering firm that designed Ziegler Park Pool in Cincinnati as well as the Florence Aquatic Center, put the cost range for the design and construction of a public pool with rough Olympic-sized dimensions between $3 million and $20 million, depending on its amenities. He said one would be “hard pressed” not to find a project for a full-sized pool that didn’t cost at least $4.5 million. Brandstetter Carroll is currently designing a pool in Lexington with a price tag of $5.5 million.
A representative from PSS Contractors, a commercial pool contractor in Cincinnati, put the conservative estimate of building a modern public pool at about $4 million. The representative added that PSS had built splash pads for anywhere between $250,000 and $2 million, depending on their sizes, although he was hesitant to give more precise numbers without knowing the scope of the project.
The commissioners did not discuss the issue deeply during the meeting. They also went straight into executive session after the agenda’s action items had concluded, so they were not free to offer additional comments. Commissioner Ron Washington did say that he may have some comments on the matter in the coming weeks but declined to comment on the spot.
The Brent Spence construction will entail a new parks master planning process, which will feature a period of public comment where residents can advocate what they’d like to see the state money spent on. Timelines for that planning process and public comment period have not yet been established.
The next meeting of the Covington City Commission will take place on Tuesday, April 9 at 6 p.m. at Covington City Hall on Pike Street.