Repairs approved for Quincy Aquatic Center

QUINCY — The intricate process of building a new Quincy Aquatic Center is underway – in a way – and in the meantime, a section of the existing pool will be getting some repairs after Quincy City Council members approved purchasing a new water heating system for the water slide section of the pool.

“As many of you remember, the 22-year-old boiler on the slide side quit running the last couple weeks of the summer last year,” explained Russ Harrington, the city’s recreation director.

The new system will cost about $36,600.

“The cost for this new system is roughly half of what we had budgeted to replace it,” Harrington said.

Council member Andrew Royer asked if the new system could be installed before the pool opens. Harrington said it would.

“The system they’ve got is two smaller, more energy-efficient boilers than the one we had in there, and they plan to link them together. (The contractor) said it should only take three days, four days to get them put in,” Harrington said.

Council members also approved an amendment to the design contract with the NAC architectural firm in Spokane, extending the contract and paying an additional fee of about $26,400. The council approved the original contract in April 2022, with design completion scheduled for December 2022. But that schedule had to be revised.

The existing pool is in East Park. The new pool will be there too but will be in the space currently occupied by a baseball field. City officials plan to move the field, but not this summer. City Administrator Pat Haley said the process of moving the baseball field would start in 2024 at the earliest. Public Works Director Carl Worley said the schedule for building a new ballfield in a different city park is still to be determined, but it won’t be in 2023. That had an effect on the pool design project.

“This is to allow them to start design, so we can have a shovel-ready design to pull the trigger on once we have the ballfield relocated,” Worley said.

Haley said in an earlier interview that city officials want to replace the pool because it’s getting older and appears to be leaking.

The pool’s opening date for 2023 is still to be determined. The first day the pool is open is tied to the last day of classes in the Quincy School District.

“We didn’t have a firm date yet, because we didn’t know when the actual last day of school was going to be,” Harrington said.

The opening date will be announced once there’s a confirmed date for the last day of school, he said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.