An indoor pool has tentatively waded into the city’s plans for renovation of McMinnville Civic Center.
Bobby Kirby, former alderman and local businessman, attended Tuesday night’s city Parks and Recreation Committee meeting and asked officials to include an indoor pool when it goes out for bids on proposed renovation of the Civic Center.
“What we would like to see you do is include an indoor pool in the bid documents,” said Kirby. “You don’t have to change a lot of what you are doing. Just simply add an 8,500-square-foot building to go onto the rear of the Civic Center. Add that in the bid documents and price that out too. You can always take that off, scape it, if you don’t want to do it.”
Bid documents are used to bid out the project in order to obtain actual numbers on how much the project will cost. At that time, officials can decide to do the project in its entirety or use the price breakdowns and remove certain items, such as the indoor pool, to reduce the cost.
Kirby said estimates he has obtained would place the cost at $2 million for a 25-meter by 25-yard lap pool and a pre-engineered building to enclose it.
“We’ve obtained pricing and we’re confident you can build an indoor pool for $2 million,” he said.
Kirby continued, “You can build an indoor pool, house it in an 8,500-square-foot facility. This was priced to match the swimming pool in Manchester. We’ve received a couple of pool bids and a couple of building bids to house it.”
Alderman Ben Newman said he looked through the information Kirby provided and did not see anything pertaining to bathrooms, locker rooms, pump room, storage, etc.
Kirby suggested constructing the building beside the Civic Center and connecting it to the main building in order to use the bathrooms located there.
“You could butt the building up to the rear door and go out the rear stairwell into this indoor pool,” said Kirby. “Your bathroom facilities would be within the Civic Center. You wouldn’t have to have that in a new building. You would just have a building with a pool. I think, when your outdoor pool was built, its pump house was designed to house another pool. You shouldn’t have to build another pump house.”
There would be enough room for retractable bleachers for spectators to use during tournaments and the existing geothermal system at the Civic Center could be used to heat and cool the building. Being a lap pool, there would be no zero entry and a device for ADA would have to be installed.
Committee members unanimously approved city administrator Bill Brock and McMinnville Parks and Recreation director Scott McCord to sit down with Kirby and generate as much information as possible on building details, then submit that information to the architect for inclusion in bid documents.