SANTA CLARA — For months, community members pleaded with the city of Santa Clara to reopen the famed George F. Haines International Swim Center after it closed in January over safety concerns. Nearly six months later, they have their wish — but it will come at a hefty cost to the city.
On Tuesday evening, the Santa Clara City Council voted 6-1 to temporarily — and partially — reopen the nearly 60-year-old facility as they continue to search for a long-term solution for the aging swim center. Councilmember Karen Hardy cast the dissenting vote.
City officials had advised against the decision and warned the council that reopening two of the three pools at the facility will cost roughly $1.8 million — and that’s if nothing else goes wrong.
“Due to the age, there is no guarantee that the facility will remain operational and because we know we’ve had repair problems in the past, we know that those repairs will be ongoing, they’ll be expensive to repair and maintain,” Assistant City Manager Cynthia Bojorquez said.
Over the last three years, Santa Clara has spent $246,000 repairing parts of the facility, some of which had to be custom made because of the pool’s age, according to the city. Despite the investment, the swim center was closed for more than 100 days last year due to mechanical issues.
The International Swim Center shuttered suddenly earlier this year after an inspection of the facility found critical safety issues like “structurally unsound” buildings and cracking throughout the diving tower. The closure forced the pool’s three main user-groups — Santa Clara Swim Club, Santa Clara Diving and the Santa Clara Aquamaids — to scramble to find other places to practice across the Bay Area.
Consultants said the diving well — where the diving and synchronized swimming teams practice — is unusable due to structural damage, but the other two pools could be revived with some work. The $1.8 million in costs includes erecting new exterior fencing that can’t be climbed over and replastering the pools, which county officials said must be done within 6 months of reopening. Adding new showers since the locker room has been deemed unsafe could also be an additional cost of $53,000 per year.
It’s unclear when exactly the facility will open, but for the swim club, the news brings some relief.
“It’s going to help us quite a bit in our ability to find water to use and train in,” Santa Clara Swim Club head coach Kevin Zacher told The Mercury News. “It’s been really difficult since January just being all over the place and families driving a lot. Just having a central place, at least for training, is going to be really helpful for our families and swimmers.”
Zacher said that renting out other pools has been a “strain on the club as a whole” and those costs have been passed onto their members.
Several parents of swimmers at the meeting said the club has been paying between $60,000 to $80,000 a month at other pools — much more than they would be paying at the International Swim Center. City Manager Jovan Grogan said the city charges the club $20,000 a year in rent and provides them with a $20,000 grant to put on events that help generate money for the city and club.
“At this rate if we don’t make any additional changes we will most likely fail,” Santa Clara Swim Club Board President Amanda Pease said. “We can’t keep up with the cost. We keep increasing our membership dues, we’ve lost a fifth of our membership, we’ve lost a fifth of our swim school and swim school is a big funding component for the swim teams.”
Mayor Lisa Gillmor feared that if they opted not to reopen the swim center temporarily that Santa Clara’s history of swimming and the legacy that Haines, a renowned U.S. Olympic coach who the facility is named after, built will cease to exist.
“This facility is an iconic legacy facility in our community,” Gillmor said, referring to some of the greatest Olympians of the 20th century who trained there.
“I have the opinion that if we’re shuttering it, we’re shuttering it almost for good because I just don’t see it coming back,” the mayor added. “And it’s certainly not going to come back with the Santa Clara Swim Club.”
Councilmember Kevin Park, whose district includes the swim center, agreed.
“We talk about a $2 million investment as it’s an investment into infrastructure,” he said. “I’m going to tell you that any time you have a program like this, it’s never into the infrastructure. The infrastructure investment is necessary, but it’s really into the swimmers who are representing Santa Clara.”
Hardy, the sole dissenting voice on the council, sided with city officials, calling the decision to reopen a “crumbling facility,” “fiscally irresponsible.”
“I think the staff has been really clear that we need to shut it down and we need to work on a general obligation bond to take care of our infrastructure that has been shoved aside,” she said. “We cannot as a council close our eyes to our realities. We can’t change the past, but we can change the future.”