STANWOOD — The focus on community fundraising to save the swimming pool at the former Stanwood Team Fitness Center switched Wednesday to raising money to bus Stanwood High School Spartan swim team members out of town for practice and swim meets.
Stanwood-Camano Swimming Foundation chairman John Russell said negotiations over the use of the fitness club pool came to a dead end recently when foundation members decided they didn’t have any firm commitments from building owner Brett Olson.
“There were just too many unknowns to go forward with him,” Russell said. “We couldn’t ask the public to step up and donate if we didn’t have a clear picture of what was going to happen to their money.”
It’s simply tough to collect public money for a private property, Olson said.
“I was willing to lease the pool for a $1 a year. But the pool needed a lot of repairs before it could open again, and I couldn’t pay for it,” Olson said. “I totally respect the foundation’s decision to go in a different direction.”
Given that, Olson announced Wednesday that he plans to fill the pool with pea gravel, put a lid on it and offer cardio- and weight-training programs there.
Outside of Marysville, it was the only 25-yard, six-lane regulation-size swimming pool in north Snohomish County.
Home waters for Spartan swimmers and the Steelhead swim team, the pool closed in April when Olson and Team Fitness club owner Michael Liberato said neither could afford to make emergency electrical repairs. The pool was drained and the doors locked.
Then in May Liberato’s business pulled out of Olson’s building altogether.
Olson said he plans to open his own gym, Resilience Fitness, in the building in July. He is gutting the interior, putting on a new roof and installing new floors.
“Then after a few successful years, maybe we could afford to haul the gravel out and open the pool again,” he said.
High school swim coach Rita Brennan doesn’t want to hear about it anymore. She’s concerned about the start of the girls fall swim season in August and where her girls are going to swim. Use of the Marysville pool for two weekday morning turnouts is the only option so far, Brennan said.
The swimming foundation plans to continue its fundraising efforts, but for now the focus will be on finding money to help the school district pay for an expensive travel schedule for the Spartan swimmers, Russell said.
In addition, the foundation may join the efforts of others in the community to research whether a YMCA pool could be built in Stanwood, he said.
The foundation plans to release its fundraising schedule later this month.
Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.
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