If all goes as planned, the new Gilmer County Swimming Pool will be open for summer.
Construction of the pool at the Gilmer County Civic Center has been completed. All that remains are additional tasks including renovation of the pool rest room and concession stand areas, confirmed Board of Commissioners Chairman Charlie Paris.
The pool is expected to officially open in May, although an exact opening date hasn’t been decided, Paris said.
“We usually open it up on Memorial Day, but it may be a little sooner this year,” he added.
The new pool has passed all leak testing, which has been going on since late last year. It failed an early leak test, which required additional work to be done, Paris confirmed.
“Once it passed the leak test, we put the final sealing around it, which we didn’t want to do until we had no leaks,” he added.
A rough cost estimate on the multiyear pool project is about $3.2 million. Since announcing the project, the county has encountered obstacles including the search for a qualified builder the county could afford and trying to find a potential alternate site for the pool.
The former county pool at the Civic Center, which had been in use since 1976, was closed in 2019 due to safety concerns from an existing leak. Demolition of the old pool started in 2020.
“It didn’t take that long building the (new) pool. Most of the time was spent saving the money to get started on the pool. We weren’t going to finance anything. We wanted to pay cash,” Paris said.
With the final tasks now at hand, Paris confirmed that he’ll be glad to finally have the pool construction off the list of pending county projects.
The main swimming area of the new pool is eight competition lanes wide. Other features include a connected diving well and separate slide and children’s play area.
“I think it’s going to last us for many decades, and I think everybody’s going to be real pleased with it,” Paris said.
Jody Cantrell, parks and recreation director, said lifeguards still have to be hired for the summer. The rec. department is currently accepting those applications.
“We’ve got probably about 15 now that’s put in applications. We’re looking at hopefully being able to get 20 or 25,” Cantrell said.