Boulder City Pool to be open Memorial Day through end of summer

By Jean Reid Norman

Monday, May 18, 2009 | 4:51 p.m.

The Boulder City Pool will be open for Memorial Day after all.

Pool officials decided to reopen the pool, 861 Avenue B, on its usual schedule after they discovered that new coping stones — the tiles around the edge of the pool that allow water to drain out — had not arrived and would be another couple of weeks, aquatics coordinator Sheri O'Berto said.

The choice was to delay the opening of the city's three pools further into June or even July, O'Berto said, or to postpone the renovation until the end of summer. The municipal pools are Boulder City's only public pools.

The decision was to open only the main pool — leaving the diving and wading pools closed — on May 23, Memorial Day weekend. The main pool will close Aug. 23 for renovations that include new plaster and coping stones and repair and resealing of the surge trenches, which take water into the filtration system, O'Berto said.

Throughout the summer, she said, pool officials hope to be able to do preparatory work on the diving and wading pools to make the project go quicker in August.

The projects are being paid for in part with $150,000 in federal Housing and Urban Development grants that must be used by Sept. 30.

O'Berto said she and other pool managers are calling swim instructors to see if classes can be scheduled again now that the pool will be open. She was confident the pool will be able to offer learn-to-swim classes, water aerobics and water therapy.

"We told people to take a month off," she said. "We're calling people and asking who hasn't already made plans."

O'Berto said she also hopes to be able to reschedule BCH Heatwave swim team practices at the main pool. The team had moved its practices to the Henderson Multigenerational Pool, a 34-mile round trip.

Crews will do as much preparation work as possible during the summer, and O'Berto said she has been told that once the work begins Aug. 24, it should be completed in three to four weeks, rather than the original five weeks.

A fence will be erected between the main pool and the diving and wading pools so construction can begin on the two smaller pools, but that work will begin only if pool officials can figure out how to block water from the shared filtration system from going to the diving and wading pools, O'Berto said.