Time Machine: Ellis Park Pool

'Pageantry, music, color and beauty will blend into a harmonious backdrop for the formal launching of the new municipal swimming pool at Ellis Park,' The Gazette reported in 1941.

The pool, officially dedicated on Sunday, June 22, 1941, was a project of the Young Men's Bureau of the Cedar Rapids Chamber of Commerce.

The man who spearheaded the project was Alvin G. Keyes, who presented the dedication key to Mayor Frank Hahn.

Up until that time, Cedar Rapids residents who wanted to swim used the river — first at the south end of May's Island, and then, beginning in 1924, on the bank of the river at Ellis Park, where a bathhouse was built that included showers, dressing rooms and an observation deck for non-swimmers.

There was a deep drop-off in the swim area where the filled sand ended, and the river current was strong, making swimming in the river dangerous.

In addition, the city was losing money each year maintaining and staffing the bathhouse and rebuilding the beach, which washed away each spring.

Keyes said the chamber 'had been advised' the loss was about $2,000 a year. 'This loss, of course, is paid by taxes and can be saved to the taxpayer if the proposed municipal pool is erected,' he argued.

VOTERS OK POOL

Believing that a city the size of Cedar Rapids should have a pool, the Young Men's Bureau began fundraising for it in 1935, raising $8,000.

'Although we feel this is a substantial sum, at that rate it would take 25 or 30 years longer to raise sufficient funds to build a pool of the size and quality which Cedar Rapids should have,' Keyes said in a 1940 report published by the bureau.

The Young Men's Bureau circulated petitions to put a proposition on the city election ballot on March 25, 1940. It asked the city to borrow $53,000 in bonds to build and equip a municipal pool. The Bureau turned over the $8,000 it had raised to reduce the amount the city would have to borrow.

CONSTRUCTION

After the bond issue passed, engineer Howard R. Green, collaborating with city engineer Frank Young, designed the pool and supervised its construction.

Stark Construction Co. was the general contractor. The pool was built with union labor.

The pool was finished in April 1941, but finishing touches and testing continued for another month.

It opened to swimmers on Memorial Day, May 30, 1941, even as landscapers continued their work around the pool.

Richard E. 'Dick' Beall, a Coe College graduate who was school superintendent at Center Point, was the pool's first manager.

'A MASTERPIECE'

Engineer Green considered the pool a mechanical masterpiece, saying it was the best one of the 16 his company had built.

The pool's filtering system handled a volume of water comparable to what the city's water plant handled in a day and completely filtered the pool water three times a day.

The council feared the new pool wouldn't pay its own way. But those fears, spurred by reports from pools in other cities, were unfounded.

At the end of its first year, the pool was within its $7,500 budget and was making a profit by the end of its second year.

Swimming lessons, water ballets, swim meets and diving exhibitions were held at the pool, as well as free swims for low-income families.

MORE POOLS

The Ellis pool was so popular — and so crowded — that voters approved another bond issue in 1956 to build swimming pools at Noelridge and Jones parks.

In 1968, the Elizabeth Bender pool was built with private funds at the Jane Boyd Community House. In 1972, after it ran into financial difficulties, the city took over its operation. It is the city's only indoor pool.

The pool at Cherry Hill Park was built in 1974.

In 1985, voters approved a $2.8 million bond issue to replace the Ellis pool. Cherry Hill also was reconstructed and the other three pools repaired. The new Ellis pool was dedicated on June 13, 1987.

Sixteen years later, in 2001, voters approved a one-year local-option sales tax to rebuild the Bever, Jones and Noelridge pools and renovate the Bender, Cherry Hill and Ellis pools.

THE '08 FLOOD

The Ellis pool closed on June 9, 2008, when the Cedar River began flooding. Four days later, the

river hit its record-setting crest of 31.1 feet, almost 20 feet above flood stage. An estimated 3.5 feet of water and a lot of mud and sludge destroyed the Ellis pool's filters and pumps.

Two years and $600,000 in repairs and renovations later, the pool reopened in June 2010.

In 2013, the River Recreation Commission looked into again allowing swimming in the Cedar River, a practice that had been made illegal within the city limits decades before. The commission proposed creating a beach in the cove that resulted when the Iowa Department of Transportation took fill dirt across the river from Ellis Park during the construction of Interstate 380.

Nothing, as yet, has come of that idea.

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