The long-awaited dome at the Vashon Pool was installed last week, and public swimming sessions are expected to begin shortly after the first of the year.
The effort is a partnership between the Vashon Park District and Vashon Seals Swim Team; park district Aquatics Director Scott Bonney credited members of both groups, as well as support from community members, with getting the project to this point, where year-round swimming will soon be a reality at the public pool.
“This is a vision and a dream and a hope that people on the island have had for a long time, and it is happening, it is really happening,” he said on Sunday.
Kelly Schmidt, recreation and operations manager at the park district, said she has many ideas for programming, ranging from family fun nights to kayak rolling clinics. Before she determines what exactly will be offered, however, she plans to feel the water and air temperature so that activities will be suited to the conditions and people of all ages will be comfortable. A grand opening is also in the works.
Currently, Schmidt’s focus is on hiring and training staff, she said, and once the core staff is in place, she plans to offer a public lifeguard training for people ages 15 and older. Registration is open now, with the class slated to begin next month.
After two years of work for representatives of the Vashon Seals Swim Team and concerted effort from the Vashon Park District, the recurring theme is that of excitement, with a bit of exhaustion mixed in. Seals representatives say thousands of hours of volunteer labor have gone into the project over the last two years, as they prepared a proposal for the park district board, worked to get the park board to pass it and then installed the inflatable dome themselves. The effort will provide a regulation-sized venue for the Seals to train in year-round, as well as benefit the community at large.
John de Groen Photo
A look at the pool schedule, posted online at the Vashon Park District website, shows that the Seals will have the pool from 3 to 5 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. Adult lap swims will be offered from 9 to 10 a.m. Mondays and Wednesdays. Open swims are set from noon to 3 p.m. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and noon to 5 p.m. Saturdays as well as from 5 to 7 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays. Lap swimmers will also be welcome during open swims. Additional open swim hours will be offered during mid-winter break, and swimming lessons for people of all ages are also planned.
“It will expand the recreational opportunities for people on this island,” Bonney said, discussing the pool’s benefits. “It has been a lot of work, and it has been totally worth it.”
To convert the pool — built in the 1970s — from a summer-only facility to one that can serve people year-round has filled much of the last two months, Bonney said. He used to joke that the boiler belonged in the Smithsonian Institution as a relic from history — but no more. It has been substantially upgraded, and several other upgrades have occurred as well, including to the pool’s lighting, main drains and water circulation systems. The locker rooms have also seen improvements, including the addition of benches and shower areas that are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and insulation and heating improvements.
Courtesy Photo
Some pool enthusiasts will notice that the slide is not under the dome. It did not fit, Bonney said, and it will be returned to service in the summer. The slide structure itself had to be moved as part of this process, however — no easy task.
“That was a challenge. We don’t have problems at the pool. We have challenges. And that was a challenge that was overcome,” Bonney said. “We never would have got through this thing if we looked at it any other way.”
Bonney was quick to credit many people with meeting that challenge and others, but singled out two engineers — Seals Swim Team dads — who donated countless hours to the project: Mike O’Connor and Ken Kirschling. O’Connor, a retired mechanical engineer, led the effort to erect the dome. On Monday, during a tour of the facility, he said he has been at the pool every day for the past two months. About 20 volunteers helped put the dome up, he added, a process that took about five days.
The dome, held aloft by fans, weighs 2,000 pounds and is tethered to the pool deck by cables and eye hooks. It is made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), the same material river rafts are made from. While the dome is heavy, O’Connor said, it is safe and would never come down on its own — and there is an emergency generator to power the fans to keep it up. However, he added that in winds over 40 miles per hour, the dome must be brought down. One person can manage that process, which takes over 30 minutes, and it can be back in place again within an hour.
Like Bonney, he stressed that the scope of the work went far beyond the dome itself.
“It’s almost like a whole new facility,” he said. “There is almost nothing that has been untouched.”
Seals Swim Team member and lifeguard Kasey Kirschling was also at the pool on Monday. Among his teammates, he said that excitement about the new dome is very high. The team missed out on the fall season and has been restricted to land workouts — so they are excited to get back in the water. There are several benefits to practicing year-round at the Vashon Pool over the Vashon Athletic Club, he said, including that the public pool is regulation length at 25 yards, has starting blocks for team members to practice on and has three more lanes, allowing for more specialized practices. He added that when a large amount of people swim at the same time, fog can develop in the pool area, but that problem, too, should be averted.
“With better air quality, we will get a better experience,” he said.
For his part, Bonney is promising good air quality, thanks in part to the high ceilings of the dome and careful attention to chemical usage. O’Connor, too, said air quality should be good and noted that the pool is exceeding ventilation requirements by about 40 percent.
John de Groen Photo
All the changes at the pool came with a cost, of course. The Vashon Seals raised more than $100,000 and will spend all of it on the effort, Seals board president Ginger Hamilton said. Additionally, a King County Youth Sports Facilities grant brought in $75,000 and required a match of 50 percent, according to Vashon Park District Executive Director Elaine Ott-Rocheford. The Seals provided more than $9,000 of the match, and the park district provided $28,000. The majority of the grant went to improving the boiler. The park district also funded some other improvements outside of what the grant covered, Ott-Rocheford said, largely the ADA-related work in the locker rooms; the park districts has allocated nearly $28,000 for those efforts. The district’s insurance company also paid $26,000 to bring the pool’s main drain into compliance with current standards.
On Monday, Ott-Rocheford said she has been busy with the administrative tasks associated with the pool cover and had not yet stepped inside. But she was quick to say she shares the enthusiasm people have for the project, adding that it has been exciting to see what the Seals have been able to accomplish with the “40-plus-year-old pool.”
“It is pretty cool. It is fun to see what can happen when a group is really passionate about a project and spearheads it and makes it happen,” she said.
