Cda Pool Plans Riding Another Wave

A 25-meter swimming pool and two gyms, all wrapped up in a community center, is only 2,000 memberships, $1.5 million in donations and a $2 million loan away.

That’s the latest plan for trying to turn more than a decade of effort into bricks and mortar - ambitious considering earlier failures and an aggressive fund-raising calendar. But the Coeur d’Alene City Council is expected to appoint a volunteer board Tuesday to raise the money and sell the memberships.

The board plans to spend about two months developing a strategy and then six months selling the $25-a-month memberships and generating contributions.

“If we don’t come close, that’s sort of a gauge of community support in the community,” said Tom Taggart, who has volunteered many hours trying to find a home for a swimming pool in the Lake City. But this time “there seems to be a broader base of support,” Taggart said.

Four attempts to pull together a pool and community center have failed. One included a bond issue to fund the buildings about 10 years ago. Meanwhile, Coeur d’Alene hasn’t had a swimming pool since the YMCA closed its pool in 1993.

Earlier attempts involved different design approaches, including making the pool part of a City Hall expansion, Taggart said. The newest plan is for a 45,000-square-foot facility, designed to stand alone and pay its own way.

Part of that would include leasing space to organizations. The Board of Realtors and the North Idaho Building Contractors Association both have expressed interest in renting at the center, said John Austin, city finance director.

Community center supporters are talking about borrowing $2 million from the Panhandle Area Council, a non-profit economic development group governed by city and county officials in the five North Idaho counties. “We can only afford loan payments on $2 million,” said Austin, who also is the mayor’s representative to the council.

The biggest hurdle, all involved agree, is raising the rest of the money for the $3.5 million center. After taking lots of citizen input, the city has decided not to put the center in the downtown park, as was once proposed. Now the talk is in the north part of the city, where population is growing fastest.

The pool would give Coeur d’Alene a way to host high school swim meets. But the first dive into the pool wouldn’t come for at least a few years, because of fund-raising, design work and locating land for the community center.

, DataTimes