Construction will begin in mid-August on Deerfield Park District’s $4.9 million overhaul of Mitchell Park Pool, originally built in 1964.
The plan recently received unanimous approval from the Deerfield Village Board, following a public hearing in October. Construction will include tearing out and replacing materials that currently form the pool foundation: 50-year-old aluminum pool walls, concrete decks, pool hardware and underground plumbing for the water feeds. Only the existing bathhouses will remain, albeit with interior renovations, new plumbing and minor outside improvements.
The new pool, using the same footprint of the existing facility, will include a six-lane lap and leisure pool, wading pool, spray pad, and a separate diving well with a water slide and one- and three-meter diving boards. Lap swimming will always be open under the new design. The pool currently has two, one-meter boards.
The diving pool will be 14-feet deep to meet Illinois Department of Public Health code. The pool deck will be broom finished, gray concrete.
The new pool is scheduled to open in 2016, finishing up the park district’s five-year plan, said Park District Executive Director Rick Julison. It should break ground in August 2015, with the pool season potentially ending early next summer.
The park district has been saving money for about eight years — especially over the last two — to cover construction costs, Julison said. The pool outlived the industry’s standard life span by decades.
“The normal life of a swimming pool is 25 to 30 years,” said Julison. “This pool has lasted 50 years and has held up very well.”
Julison said installing a higher, 3-meter diving board stays on trend with newer public and private swimming pools, and allow divers to develop competitive skills. Deerfield High School divers Sean Scarry and Ryan Church won national AAU diving titles in Atlanta in August. High school competition uses 1-meter springboards, but at the collegiate level diving competition moves to 3-meter boards.
DHS diving coach Rick Foerch said most public and private swimming pools have yet to install 3-meter boards, largely because of related expenses.
The pool plan does not include changes to the parking or access road. Twelve trees removed for construction will be replaced to create screening for nearby residents. The village’s bike routes along Wilmot Road and the north side of Deerfield Road will feed into the bike racks on the 14-acre park property, which also includes a playground, ball fields and tennis and basketball courts.
Mitchell Park Pool attendance has dropped but remained strong, despite cooler-than-normal summers in 2013 and 2014, officials said. More than 13,000 people visited the pool in 2014, down from nearly 18,300 in 2012.
Officials stressed that they want the pool to continue serving locals first.
“It’s always been a park board philosophy to keep it a neighborhood pool, not a regional pool, so part of our (planning) is to keep spending conservative,” said Julison. “If you get into larger water parks, they need revenue from other communities to make it work. We’ve been actively planning for this since 2006.”
Plan Commission member Mary Oppenheim echoed Julison’s remarks.
“We’re not expanding the size of the pool,” Oppenheim said. “We’re modernizing it and making it work for the patrons we have.”
