Iowa City selects preliminary concept for City Park Pool replacement

IOWA CITY — The Iowa City Council on Tuesday selected a preliminary design for the new City Park Pool, choosing the concept that was favored in a public survey.

The council voted last year to replace the 76-year-old pool, which was losing 5 million gallons of water each year through cracks and separated joints.

Option A, as it is referred to in city documents, features a free form activity pool attached to a lap pool with six 50-meter lap lanes, according to the meeting’s agenda. The lap lanes have a depth of three-and-a-half feet to five feet to allow for swimming, water walking, and fitness activities. Additionally, option A has a separate deeper pool with low and high diving boards.

This concept would use 34 percent less water than the current pool and is estimated to cost nearly $18.4 million, a significant price increase from the $10 to $15 million estimate that was used earlier in the planning process.

The jump in cost estimates came during the design process when the city realized its original price range would not pay for a pool that would best fit the city’s needs, City Manager Geoff Fruin said at Tuesday’s city council meeting.

“We made the decision as staff to proceed with what we felt could meet the community objectives, not wanting to sell Iowa City short for several decades to come,” he said.

To close the funding gap, the city could pull money from reserve funds, such as the facilities reserve fund, Fruin said. However, using that as the only funding source would spend nearly all of the facilities reserve fund, he said.

The city also could supplement funding through internal loans, which it has done with other facility projects in the past. Fruin said that was done with the city’s East Side Recycling Center, which was opened in 2012.

While the new $18.4 million estimate wasn’t part of the original plan, Fruin said the city will be able to make that cost work as long as the project doesn’t run further over budget.

Community feedback

The design concept was created and selected after a series of public information gathering sessions held through the end of 2023 and into 2024.

In a public survey of the four designs, concept A received 84.5 percent positive response, which was the most of any of the four designs, Juli Seydell Johnson, Iowa City’s director of parks and recreation, said Tuesday. The city received more than 1,500 responses to the survey.

Although design A received positive response in the public survey, some community members shared concerns about the design.

Some said they want to see 25-meter lap lanes as opposed to 50-meter lanes. The current pool has shorter lanes for lap swimming in the deeper section.

In the various public surveys and input sessions, shorter lap lanes were not highlighted by the community as much as other amenities, Seydell Johnson said.

Other people said they would prefer more separation between the activity pool and the lap lanes to avoid the lap lane section being overrun by children.

“I use the pool not for lap swimming but just to be in the pool, and I look for spaces not to be kicked by kids,” said Iowa City resident Sharon DeGraw. “And I see the design A is going mostly in a little kid direction, and I don’t know that I’ll be lap swimming because I don’t do that.”

Seydell Johnson said a change could be made further along in the design process to separate the activity pool from the lap pool to accommodate many uses by different age groups at the same time.

Next steps

Now that the city council has approved a preliminary conceptual design, more specific designing will begin. That process will last until January 2025, Seydell Johnson said.

Next, it is anticipated that the bidding and contract awarding for construction will occur from February 2025 to March 2025.

After the bidding and contract process is complete, construction is expected to take place from April 2025 to April 2026, with the new City Park Pool opening in May 2026.

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