Welcome to the February 5, 2024 gross commission meeting.
Secretary Ballinger, please call the roll.
Mr. Cook.
Here.
Mr. Kearsley.
Here.
Mr. Meyer.
Here.
Mr. Oler.
Here.
Vice Chair Moran.
Here.
And Chair Garland.
Here.
Let the record show that everyone is in attendance tonight.
And if I could make one quick announcement,
our Granicus system is down.
For those of you that are watching not here live,
but the YouTube is, YouTube,
I guess it's not YouTube TV,
it's YouTube is still up
and our Walnut Creek TV is still streaming.
So you can watch it in other places.
This is the public communications portion of the agenda.
This portion of the meeting is reserved
for comment on items, not on the agenda.
Under the Brown Act,
the commission cannot act
on items raised during public communications,
but may respond briefly.
The statements made are questions posed request clarification or refer the item to staff.
Does any member of the public wish to speak on an item not on the agenda?
Secretary Ballinger?
I don't have any cards for anybody that would like to speak.
If you do come on up to the podium and please fill out a yellow card and this would just
be again anything not on the agenda.
It looks like we have no speakers.
Okay moving to the consent calendar do any commissioners have questions on the
consent calendar items? Does any member of the public wish to provide comments
on the consent calendar? So again that would be the same thing if there's
anybody that wishes to speak on those three items on the consent calendar. I'm
not seeing anybody rushing up to the podium so I would say no. Do we have a
a motion to approve the consent calendar so moved okay Commissioner Kearsley yes
mr. Oler yes mr. cook yes mr. Meyer yes vice chair Moran yes and chair Garland
yes the motion passes unanimously next on the agenda item for most which most of
you are here is the commission can will consider the staff report on the new
aquatic and community center at Heather Farms Park schematic design presentation package with a focus on aquatics
Good evening chair Garland and members of the parks recreation and open space Commission. My name is Janine Caballie
I'm a senior planner here with the city of Walnut Creek and I'll be presenting to you this evening on the new aquatic and community
Center proposed for the Heather Farm Park
And I'm joined this evening by members of our consultant team which include Nolentem Architects, RM Design Group, and Aquatic Design Group.
And they'll each be presenting alongside me this evening as well as be available to answer any of your questions.
So we met with the pros last month with the focus on this project but only on the building
footprints, building site plan and the outdoor spaces.
So this evening we're coming back to you with the other aspect of the project which is the
aquatics portion, the two pools, the 15 meter pool, the lap pool and the 50 meter lap pool
and the recreational pool and the associated outdoor pool deck and spaces.
So the purpose tonight is to present on those aspects of the project and receive feedback
from the pros commission on the schematic design presentation package which I'll outline
what's included in that momentarily for the combined new facility.
So the agenda will be that we'll give our presentation, then we'll take your questions.
There will be an opportunity for a public comment and then to hear the commissioner's
feedback.
So in terms of the presentation outline, I'll be speaking mostly to kind of giving a broad
brush overview of the project and providing some of the historical background as well
as the work that we've done over the last about four and a half years and plus.
And then I'll be handing it over to our consultants who will be presenting some of the work that
we've been doing during this more recent phase of work which we're referring to as the schematic
design presentation.
And that package includes a number of drawings that were in your agenda packet such as the
perspective illustrations, the site plans, activities, events and programs included in
in terms of recreational programs at the space, pool metrics and pool diagrams.
And then I'll highlight the next steps for you in the process.
So in terms of the purpose of the project, these are a number of the key project assumptions
and principles that were confirmed by council last year, including replacing the aging aquatic
center and community center buildings with one combined new facility, and to locate that
facility at the location of the existing community center site within the park.
To replace three pools with two, a recreational pool and a 50-meter lap pool and that the
existing community center and aquatic center activities that take place in those two facilities
today will be accommodated in the new facility.
And in addition that the larky pool was renovated in deep men in 2017 to provide aquatic programming.
I'll also state that by locating the new facility at the site of the community center it allows
for the Clark swim center to remain open during the two years of construction to build this
new facility, and that was one of the primary rationale for the site that's located was
identified for the future facility to be located.
So in terms of the project timeline, for the past four and a half years, we've been engaged
in an effort referred to as your park's future that began, initiated in June 2018, and came
to a conclusion in February or February January of 2023.
And so what some of the next slides that I'm going to show
you will give you just a sort of historical and brief recap
of some of the key decisions that were made
during that phase of the project.
The phase of the project that we're currently
in is the design process and community engagement
and construction and that initiated in September
of last year and will conclude in 2027.
So right now we're in the process of developing the schematic design package.
So looking back a few years we worked with the pros and arts commission to develop a
mission statement that was ultimately confirmed by council for the aquatics portion of this
facility and the mission statement states that the Clarkson Center at Heather Farm will
be a multi-generational community aquatic facility, that it will provide instructional
recreational and competitive programming, and that it will in addition support family
events and social activities for both local and regional users.
So looking back even further, there's been a number of studies and decisions made about
aquatics planning at the city of Walnut Creek since 2010, so I'm just the slide summarizes
those and I'll just hit on each of them.
So it began in 2010 with an aquatic needs assessment and then in 2013 to 2014 consensus
was reached that a two-pool aquatic center would meet the needs of the swim teams and
recreational swim community.
In 2015 to 2016 council endorsed a two-pool facility to include a recreational pool and
a 25-meter lap pool.
So at that time the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation expressed interest in a 50 meter pool instead
of the 25 meter pool and a commitment to contribute 50% of the cost differential between a 50
meter and a 25 meter pool.
So in 2017 City Council directed staff to pursue two alternative designs for the lap
pool, both a 25 meter pool option and a 50 meter pool option in addition to the second
pool, the recreational pool.
So when we began the your parks your future project in 2018 it was with that assumption
that we should be looking at either a 25 meter pool or 50 meter pool option.
Two years into that project an MOU with the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation was prepared
and adopted in April 2022 and I'll give you some of the key pieces of information from
that agreement.
It was approved in April 2022.
The aquatic foundation pledged to raise $3 million towards construction of the two pools,
the 50 meter pool and a family recreational pool.
And that the city would consult with the aquatic foundation to provide input on potential designs
and locations of the aquatic facility during the preliminary design, design development
and final design stages.
So during the Year Parks, Year Future project,
we did a number of engagement,
provided a number of engagement opportunities
over the course of from June 2018 to February of 2023,
including an open house event,
a number of pop-up events
where we went out to existing community,
social gatherings and events such as the first Wednesdays
and Farmer's Market.
We also conducted an online survey.
During that process we had an advisory committee
with a number of members from various commissions
that advised us along the way.
And we also held a number of joint commission meetings,
council meetings, and stakeholder meetings.
And all of those meetings
and resulted in a lot of thoughtful feedback
that was then used to help us develop a conceptual plan, which
I'll show you in a moment.
So some of the engagement that we heard at those events
was a strong interest in competitive and recreational
swimming, support for our 50-meter pool
and compared to the 25-meter pool,
and supporting existing programming and swim team
use of that pool.
We heard a need to balance recreational and competitive
swimming activities in the pools and as a result City Council prioritized the
replacement of the Heather Farm facilities including approval of a 50
meter lap pool and recreational pool. So all of that work and effort culminated
in the conceptual site plan that's shown here. This was approved by Council in
February 2023 and it was used as the foundational document for the development
of the schematic design package that's before you this evening.
Also that went along with the approval of this
was the budget, and a number of considerations
came out of that effort that are listed here on the right,
items that should be considered as we move forward
in the schematic design package.
And so our consultants will be going through and identifying
how we've addressed these concerns in the latest package
while still keeping in mind the constraints of the project site
and budget.
So this concludes the historical background
component of the process or of the presentation.
And now the more exciting part is the new facility,
what it looks like, and the details of the design
that our consultants will be presenting to you.
Good evening.
I'm Jocelyn Lawrence-Barrish with Nolentam Architects.
And I'm going to just briefly touch on some of the community
engagement results that we received.
We went over with this group all of the results
that we received regarding architectural character
in the last meeting that we had.
We wanted to focus on the two questions that were specifically
focused on aquatics.
we asked about what kinds of recreational amenities
should be featured in the recreational pool.
The weighted word cloud, once again,
shows what the writing comments were most concerned with,
that there'd be a variety of ages
accommodated and interested by the amenities in this pool.
And the specific amenities that people were,
they had pictures they could click on,
which ones seemed the most attractive to them
were each entry got the most interest,
spray features number two, number three, a current channel,
all of which are currently in the design.
We also asked about a little bit more whimsical question,
what kind of theme might be appropriate for this pool,
and there was a great interest in aquatic life.
It's an apt given the area that the new pools will be in
next to some ponds and lakes.
From this community feedback,
we developed some design principles for the pool specifically,
which was the mandate that we balance the recreational
and competitive swim uses in the new pools,
that the facility be able to accommodate
all of the programs that are currently hosted
at the Clark Swim Center with the possibility
for future program expansion,
that we try to maximize pool deck space
as allowed by site constraints
and provide overflow spaces for large events,
including entries and exits that actually work
for the numbers of people that could be coming
and going in events like that,
that the changing rooms and shower rooms
be right-sized in comparison to what Clark
is able to provide at the moment,
and that the interior spaces have good flexibility,
ability to give a lot of different uses
that might want entry onto the pool deck
and the support spaces be appropriately sized.
We spoke specifically then
after those community outreach events to key stakeholders,
which included the list you see before you.
About aquatics, we had a conversation
with the aquatic, Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation
and the Walnut Creek Aquinas Masters Aquavirus swim clubs.
That's a little bit of a double,
they're related to each other.
We had a session in which we noted
that there were concerns about pool deck capacity,
the number of pools, the potential reduction
from three pools down to two pools,
and concerns about how the overlapping uses
that would need to be hosted in deep water
might work scheduling-wise,
amongst a lot of other comments.
Those were the high-level important ones
that we wanted to present just now.
I'm going to briefly talk about the rest of the building
simply because the pools are not a standalone.
In case anyone has not yet seen, this
is where the design stands currently
with a building oriented towards the pond.
There's a couple different versions
of the building really similar in cost and design
that we had feedback on during our last session.
The pools face a wing that's similar
throughout both schemes.
And really, the building, therefore,
just slightly to the north, the pools are to the south of that, they're bounded by
north Sound Carlos Drive on one side, the pond on the other, and the all-abilities playground
to the south. So the spillover spaces are in those park areas just to the south of the
enclosed pool area. And now I'm going to pass things on to my colleague, Dennis, and he's
going to talk about how the pools themselves developed from the conceptual design phase
into the version that we're going to look at tonight.
Great, thank you.
It's a pleasure to be here with you this evening.
And first of all, I'd like to commend the city of Wellness Creek, the city staff, the
community.
We know this aquatic center as the history was shown here earlier has been something
that's been discussed for almost 20 years now and the need for water.
And taking a look at the concept, taking a look at the commitment that the cities come
up with is an amazing aquatic center, something that's probably unequaled here in the Bay
Area and par with anything that's been built here in California probably within the last
10, 15 years.
So when we take a look at the aquatic center, we see the concept on the left, and this was
the idea of a two-pool complex with a 50-meter pool and some kind of a recreational pool
that would allow us to have warm water, learn to swim, recreation, various activities in
that pool.
From that in schematic design, you can see the pool image shown on the right.
And here's where we're showing a 50-meter Olympic-sized pool, 50 meters by 25 yards,
along with diving boards off the end, meeting the new California building code and health
code, which says that our pools have to have a shallow end, no deeper than 3 feet, 6 inches.
So a 3.6 shallow end with stairs that are also required by today's standards that weren't
in place when the original pools were built.
Along with the recreational pool that had an area for lap swim, fitness swim, learn
to swim, a current channel area, we can talk about some of the uses of that in a moment.
And then the beach entry with the interactive play.
So when we take a look at this and start comparing, what you see is that the surface area of the
The existing Clark Swim Center had just over or just under 18,000 square feet of water
surface area, little over 35,000 square feet of deck, and almost 36,000 square feet of
landscape.
So the original proposal that we presented in the schematic was to concept base was to
have 19,540 square feet of water surface area, 40,000 square feet of deck, and another 29,000
feet of landscape surrounding area to support the programs.
We then met and presented this to various community people that were kind enough to
give us their time, give us their attention and their input and based on that input we
made some adjustments to this and in doing so we now have the current proposal which
has just over 20,000 square feet of water, has 42,000 square feet of pool deck and almost
39,000 square feet of support space around the pool area.
If we start to take a look at the metrics
and try to boil this down,
oftentimes we talk about, for example,
a 50-meter Olympic-sized pool and say,
why do we need an Olympic-sized pool?
Well, there's two reasons we would go
with an Olympic-sized pool.
First and foremost,
we wanna support long course, 50-meter Olympic swimming.
The second is the number of lanes
that we can get into the pool.
And so when we start talking about these lanes,
We often talk about four, six, typically up to six swimmers per lane.
So how many of our participants can get in the water and use it at one time?
So a typical 50-meter pool that's going to have about 20 lanes then can support about
120 swimmers practicing at any one time.
And when we get into the programs, we're going to talk about programming from swimming for
practices, swimming for swim meets, water polo, synchronizer, artistic swimming as we
we now call it, and the various programs we're trying to put into the pool.
So looking at the, again, the original Clark Swim Center, we have a 50-meter pool that
has 20 lanes all in shallow water from 3 feet 7 inches to 5 feet 1 inch.
And by shallow water what I'm defining is by California Health Code, water that's less
than 6 and a half feet, which means it's not deep enough to have diving entries into the
pool.
California code anything that's six feet deep or less.
We have to post no diving signs all around the pool
for that debt.
There's also the 25 meter pool that has six lanes.
So that it has a total of 26 short course lanes
in the existing Clark pool,
along with the nine long course lanes.
And again, those long course lanes in the 50 meter pool
currently again are all in that shallow water.
So our proposal that we came with the concept was
to have the 13 lanes that would be in deep water,
another five lanes that would have been in shallow water
of the 50 meter pool,
a recreational pool with five lanes,
so that we would end up with a total of 23 short course lanes
with eight long course lanes.
Once again, when we met with the various user groups,
they came in and gave us their suggestions to this.
This was adjusted so that we now have 14 short course lanes
in all deep water, which would allow us
to have two six-courses sections operating at the same time
with a buffer between those two.
We also have an additional six lanes
that are in the shallow water,
and then we have the six lanes
that are in the recreation pool,
so we now have a total of 26 short course lanes,
so that we have the same number of lanes
that the Clark Swim Center currently has today,
albeit lanes that are deep water
and have a lot of other functions
that you currently cannot do.
We also increased, we widened,
added an extra lane on the long course.
We ended up with nine long course lanes,
again, to be able to support
and to the suggestion of the local team.
So, summarizing those changes that were made then
from concept to this schematic
is that we added one 25-yard lane to the recreation pool
to make it a six-lane pool.
We added two 25-yard lanes to the 50-meter pool,
And we were able to do that by narrowing the stairs
at the end, again, the health department requirement,
and in the shallow water where it's not competition
for, quote, fast lanes, we narrowed those lanes
from eight feet to seven feet to be able to pick up
an extra two lanes in the pool itself.
We added the extra 50 meter lanes,
so we narrowed the lanes on the long course,
but it took us from eight lanes to nine lanes.
We increased the deck area from that 35,846
to 42,000 square feet of deck around the two pools,
increased the landscape area from 35,900 to the 38,800.
We also redesigned the south service lot
at their suggestions so that we could have an expanded event
overflow.
So during swim meets and large events,
we can open gates so people can get out
to what we call Tent City, to where the teams or the various
users can congregate.
We added a second overflow exit to the southwest of the pool deck as well.
So if we're looking at activities and programs, this matrix shows on the left the various
programs that Clark Swim Center currently supports, and then the proposed facility which
you can see supports everything that Clark Swim Center currently supports, plus quite
a few other programs as well.
And by the way, it's important to note that these activities that we're showing in this
are all specific to Clark Swim Center.
This is not taking the Larky Swim Center into account in these numbers and the levels of
service to the community.
So looking at some diagrams.
On the right-hand side, you see the 50-meter pool, and up at the top of the pool, the north
of the page, in the light blue, you can see the shallow water with the walkout stairs
on either side of the pool to support swim lessons, fitness and other uses into the pool.
You can see the first 50 feet where that's shallow water to again support these other
programs.
It then transitions to what we consider competition depth which is seven foot deep or deeper.
And it stays at the seven foot depth until we get down to the deep end where the diving
boards are to create the well as required by code that can support one meter and three
meter springboard diving.
We take a look at the recreation pool.
Now we have six lanes that are in the pool.
We have a deep end on the right-hand side so that we could have diving starts into that
end of the pool if we want.
This could support a swim team, for example, using that.
Also during long course meets, then we looked at those six lanes and said this can serve
as warm-up cool-down areas for large swim meets when we're running in the long course
section.
We also have a current channel, which is like a mini lazy river.
So this is moving water that allows children to play and recreate.
It can serve for fitness classes where you go with or against the current of the current
channel.
When we take a look at patrons with sensory issues, the idea of this moving water and
having this is something that can be quite helpful in adaptive learning types of programs.
And then we also have the beach entry with the interactive play as part of that recreation
pool.
So boiling down into this 50 meter pool then, once again we've got a pool that supports
long course and short course swimming.
It can support swim lessons both in the shallow water and deep water, advanced technique lessons.
Recreation swim, competitive swim, swim meets and special events.
We can host whatever we want to be able to host at these types of events on the short
of course, we have the exercise, lap swim, shallow deep water
exercise programs that are being supported here.
Water polo can fit into this as part of this program.
And we also have the one and three meter diving boards.
In water inflatables is something
we bring into this pool.
And these inflatables, the taller they get,
the deeper the water wants to be.
So by having the deep water in this pool,
it lends itself to that little bit higher thrill
for the older children to come recreate.
and have the activities at our aquatic center.
So looking at the short course now, trying to break that down,
we've colored this up to make it a little bit easier to see.
But you can see we have two pairs of six-lane short course.
That's the 25-yard side-to-side swimming with one lane
in between the two, the eight.
So we have that total of 17 lanes that we're showing there,
or excuse me, 13 lanes that we're showing there.
And then we have the shallow end that can still be used
for recreation swim, for lapse swim, for practices, but at the top of the page, that light pink
area, we wouldn't have racing platforms for diving into the area because it doesn't meet
California code in those depths.
Again, we also have the six lanes in the recreation pool that could be counted in what we might
be doing for some of our events.
From an artistic swimming standpoint, we have a deep end that exceeds the three-meter requirement
for artistic swimming.
We also have the 2 meters so that, again, we can host artistic competitions, we can
have practices, we can do all of the programs that are required by both USA and FINA requirements
for artistic swimming.
From a water polo programming standpoint, we have a deep water area that can support
not only 25 yards, but 25 meters, or all the way up to the international water polo 30-meter
floating goal water polo field of play.
With that same amount of water, if we want to have practices, we can turn those perpendicular
to run the short course.
This would allow us to have two teams practicing simultaneously in that pool, if that's a program
that we decide we would want to be able to support at this facility.
Taking a look at the overall site plan to the recreation pool now.
Once again, we've got a pool with a beach entry, play structure, the current channel,
interactive splash features and lap lanes that conserve recreation, swim lessons, exercise.
A vast array of programs to that pool.
So in that pool, the proposed amenities, again, a beach entry or zero-depth entry that allows
parents and children alike to sit in two inches, three inches, six inches, 18 inches of water.
The spray water where we have the interactive play is all done in what we call waiting pool
depth where the water is 18 inches deep or less as required by code. That current channel
which will be roughly three feet of water depth or that interactive water there and
then also on the climb on structure it would have a small slide that children could use
for the toddlers in that waiting pool depth area. Next steps.
So that concludes the presentation of the different features that support the aquatic
programming at the proposed facility.
In terms of the next steps, so we've presented and received feedback from a number of commissions.
We'll be synthesizing that information and taking it to council.
We have two meetings scheduled with council, the first of which will focus on the building
and site plans similar like we did with this group last month.
And then a second meeting focusing on aquatics, the pool design and pool deck.
And then the remaining part of the design development phase is to prepare a more refined
building plan with more details taking into consideration the feedback that's been received.
And then getting into a little bit more finer grain detail with the materials palette the
landscaping and color palette.
So let's see.
So now we're available for your questions.
Any questions of staff from the committee or commission.
Thank you very much.
That was very helpful.
I thought I came prepared but I'm not a pool expert so there's a lot of facts and figures
in there that I am going to have to digest before I ask a lot of questions but one of
them was on the in regards to the land the pool the landscaping around the pool is that
all usable like a lawn feature that kids can hang people can hang out on or is that unusable
landscaping the short answer is it's usable but I'll refer to our landscape architect
Hi, I'm Gina Chavez from RRM Design Group and we're the landscape architects on the
project.
So yes, there's a mix of landscape around the pool and there'll be lots of lawn space
for people to hang out and, you know, set up a towel, umbrellas, but there's also other
landscape space that creates buffers for shade and some acoustic buffers as well.
In regards to the sort of the beach splash area, is there like an industry standard sizing
of what that should be in relation to other pools and are we in the average, are we bigger
than normal, are we less shorter than normal or?
The beach entry in the shallow water that we're showing here is about an average area.
So there are some standards. California code says that our maximum slope in that shallow
area is a one foot drop in a 10 foot run. We're showing this at a one foot drop in a
12 foot run to make it a little bit shallower for the kids to play. In terms of a splash
zone, we did one for example recently for the city of Rancho Cordova over in the Sacramento
area. And its beach splash zone was about half of what this size is here. It had some
interactive play but wasn't large enough to have the climb on structure and that
was one of the things we were targeting was to have this climb on structure that
children can interact with it is ADA compliant for interaction as well and
that kind of drove the size of the 18-inch wading pool depth of that part
of the pool. I have to imagine that's probably not a year-round type of a
Structure right our kids playing in that in December in January and February or like is that a four-month open kind of a thing?
Or is that a that's a good question and it's I don't know we know the answer to it just yet
And it may even be a hybrid the short answer is though the water is heated
So it does have the ability to run year-round
However demand for that amenity when kids are back in school is probably limited
So there may be birthday party rentals or other programs that they might the city might want to operate perhaps
It's a weekend only
type of a piece and then when it's really in climate weather storms like yesterday or something then we clearly wouldn't be using it
And that type of weather
But that was also the idea of having that as part of this space with warmer water and then other functions within the pool
and there's no way to sort of
extend that short course pool so that the two,
the recreational pool and the short course pool
could be, you could utilize it for one or the other,
like, you know, eight months of the year,
you're adding another three or four lanes
in that recreational area.
And then during the summer months when more kids
wanna use that area, you're closing that off.
Yeah, the challenge we have is in California,
our code says that if we have interactive play,
it has to be waiting pool depth,
which is gonna be 18 inches of water depth
and that's gonna be too shallow in that surface area
of water to be able to support lap swim
and fitness classes and things like that.
So if we're going to have that interactive play,
it really has to be the weighting depth.
And so that's why you really can't expand that
for those other types of programs.
Okay, yeah, thanks for educating us all on those things
which aren't in my normal day job.
But I look at the looking at the map here
that you've illustrated here, which is great.
But I mean, is it possible to extend the short course pool
further to the below that?
Or are these dimensions based on what can fit in that space?
Jeanine mentioned, I believe at the beginning,
site constraints.
And I was just wondering if that's what she was referring to
when she used those words.
Yeah, well, first of all, make sure we're talking the same
that I'm understanding.
When you say extend the short course pool,
we're talking about the recreation pool,
but the lanes in that pool, right?
Yes, yes.
Yeah, one of the things that's always a challenge for us,
I'm the aquatic sky, you know?
And so for us, we come in and it can be all about the water.
So we can walk in and say,
we'll give you a maximum of utility of water,
but in doing so, we're gonna sacrifice deck,
we're gonna sacrifice landscape.
And those are all things that if it's truly gonna be
successful facility, we have to have a balance. We can't have it all water and then no place
for anyone to sit or to support different events and things. So making sure we've got
the balance of landscape to deck, to shade areas and all that is something that's really
important to do. And that's where we're looking at the constraints. One of the things I neglected
to mention when I began this is the original concept had the pools kind of going in a perpendicular
direction. And one of the things we did in our concept and then the schematic design as you
notice the 50 meter pool has been rotated almost 90 degrees that was to get the long access of the
the competition pool north-south which much like tennis courts or soccer fields from a water polo
and those types of events having a north-south arrangement is preferable to be able to support
those. The other thing that we're doing in the site is setting it up so that in
a way we can bifurcate this site so that what we're showing in this concept we
can have families coming in to use the recreation pool to have swim lessons to
have senior fitness classes but at the same time this facility could support a
swim meet that's gonna block that off where the the teams might be charging
fees to come in and use the pool so you're restricted in using it. So by
creating this path of travel from the bathhouse that would allow us to be able
to close fences between the two area by rolling gates or such allows us to be
able to have swim meets or other events but then not have to shut off the rest
of the community to the use of aquatics should we choose not to do so.
Okay thanks. Any other questions from the commission? Robert. In terms of sound
mitigation, what is the proposed barriers between the community center and the pools?
There's two primary ones, and if I miss something, then I'll ask my colleague here to speak about
them, but one is the building itself, the way that the orientation and the location
of the building is to prevent or to act as a barrier of noise for some of the areas to
the north and then for the areas to the west there is a landscape berm let's
highlight here so this whole area here is a landscape burn berm which is meant
to ask act as noise attenuation it's more of a comment but I know for the
aqua nuts and those representatives in the room particularly when there's
training going on and the coaches are marking orders on the loudspeakers it
carries quite far and I know that you know that's something it most recreation
facilities don't have and I know there needs to be consideration for that
because when those activities are going on and of course at the community centers
being used you know that could carry and so it's something as bring up that that
kind of sound it travels more than say occasional you know hollering and other
things, but certainly also, you know, consideration for large events that when
there's lots of people there, lots of sound, certainly could travel and, you
know, those using the community center might be impacted, but it's good to see
that it's under consideration to mitigate that. Another question is around
the Lazy River. Do we have any other public facilities that we know of any
other communities that have adopted this? Having Lazy Rivers is part of
I will clarify it's a current channel, not a lazy river.
So I'll make that.
Okay, right, okay.
All right.
That's an important distinction.
A current, a lazy river is regulated by DOSH,
the Department of Occupational Safety and Health
as an amusement ride, and that's a body of water
that's set up for patrons to sit in inner tubes
and for it to convey them around a course.
In a current channel, we have moving water,
but it's not that level of movement in the water
that would convey a rider around,
and that's the difference between a current channel.
To answer your question directly, yes.
We have a current channel over
at the East Oakland Sports Center
that we did for the city of Oakland.
We have a current channel at the Allen Wood Aquatic Center
for the city of Fairfield.
We also have a current channel at the Aquatic Center
for the city of West Sacramento.
the top of my head those are three examples of it. Thank you for that, another question
around the diving boards, you mentioned about having a was a three meter and a one meter
and one meter right, was there support in the community for that or is it just that
it was based on an earlier layout when Clark swim center had diving boards. My understand
is it's support from the community to have one meter and three meter diving. Part of
The issue is we take a look at diving that happens today and pools have gotten bigger
and deeper to be able to support diving to make sure we can do it in a safe way, to make
sure we've got areas and ways to separate where divers might be using the pool versus
lap swimmers or swim teams, things like that.
For example, here in California, CIF, high school swim meets, one-meter diving is a swim
meet event.
And so, for example, we just recently redid the Monte Vista High School Pool just south
here in Danville, because it wasn't deep enough for diving boards and for the water polo.
And so they just took the pool and expanded it, replaced it with a new one to be able
to support both of those programs.
Okay.
Thank you.
Go ahead.
I have two relatively quick ones.
But on one of the diagrams that said temporary bleachers and temporary scoreboard, and I'm
wondering does that mean that's where they temporarily might go or are they temporary
to the season or what's going on that weekend or did you just kind of talk to me about that?
Sure that's a great question and I should have brought that up before and that is during
certain programs for example on the 50 meter pool if you're running short course swimming
side to side, the ideal position to be able to view that event is off the end of the pool
where you can see the swimmers swim across your field of vision.
Whereas if you're sitting on the one side, you're going to watch the people start
from the opposite side because USA Swimming says we cannot put bleachers behind swimmers
in bathing suits up on starting blocks and people with phones
and cameras and things like that in today's world.
So that means you would be at the far side.
And when they're finishing, they're
going to be at the opposite side of the pool.
So it's difficult to see who might be,
how the swimmers are finishing in the event.
So during certain programs, having the ability
to have bleachers off of that end of the pool
can be a benefit.
Or if we have real large swim meets,
because in talking with the swim teams here in the community,
there's two or three events a year
where there's going to be perhaps two-day events
or something that for that spillover we want to be able to accommodate much larger groups
than we would on a typical day-to-day month-to-month basis for that.
Okay.
And then the scoreboard itself, there was discussions about scoreboards and whether
we add a scoreboard to the system, whether we have it set up so that one could be added
in the future and or temporary depending on whether this was a water polo event, a artistic
swimming, or if we're using it for swim team uses?
Gotcha.
Second question, and this is again,
I go back to I'm not a pool guy.
I'm wondering though, when somebody
says I want a 50 meter pool, does that mean 50 meters?
Or is there a, sometimes it means 52, or sometimes,
does that make sense?
It does.
Are there different types of 50 meter pools, or what?
Well, officially being a pool boy, being the pool guy here,
being a pool guy, 50 meters is 164 feet.
And so that's an Olympic length pool, or Olympic size pool.
Now we talk about stretch 50 meter pools,
and that's gonna be a pool that could support 50 meters,
but now we start to stretch that.
So for example, when we did the aquatic center
for UC Davis, that was a stretch pool there.
Now that pool is 65 meters long.
So it was a pool that was designed to be able
to have two movable bulkheads to set up multiple programs
in this pool at the university level to be able to do that.
One of the challenges we have is that if we wanted a high end performance 50 meter long
course pool, we would want to have it in all deep water.
The problem is that all deep water doesn't meet California building code or health code
for a public swimming pool.
So you could go to a longer pool that would allow you to have a bulkhead so that you could
have it in deep and then still transition to shallow water like the UC Davis where we
we did in that case a 65 meter pool to achieve that.
Can I just add one thing?
So one of the optional items
that we've been looking at for the past few years
is to add a one meter bulkhead.
There's been some recent requests for a two meter bulkhead
but that one meter bulkhead could move
through the 50 meter lap pool dividing it
so that you could have multiple activities in the pool.
So in the conceptual site plan, we were cost estimating
a 51 meter pool.
And for clarification, California,
if we wanna put a movable bulkhead into the pool,
California says our unobstructed walkway around a pool
has to be not less than four feet.
One meter is 3.28 feet.
So technically we would stretch it four feet, not one meter.
It could be six feet.
It's somewhat subjective or arbitrary,
perhaps even a two meter.
And what it means is we have to lengthen the pool
that distance so we could have this bulkhead.
We call it a floating movable bulkhead.
Dry, the bulkhead basically is a stainless steel bridge
that spans the pool.
It weighs about 11,000, 12,000 pounds dry.
Has inflatable bladders that allow you to inflate it,
move it to a position and then deflate it back into place.
So it's not something you're moving every hour.
It's somewhat cumbersome to move, but we can stretch the pool so we can have that bulkhead
at the end and still have 50 meters within that as part of the bulkhead,
but then we could move it out and use it to create extra usable spaces and stuff.
So they do add a lot of flexibility to pool to add a movable bulkhead,
but they're quite expensive to capitalize.
And then also, again, having staff to be able to move it and do some stuff like that.
the town where I live, Carlsbad, the aquatic center there,
they had two lifeguards here about a month ago
decided to move the bulkhead.
It may have been taught on how to do it
and they sank it in the pool
and closed the pool for a week
until they could get cranes to get the thing lifted back out
and ride it back up again.
If we go to a movable bulkhead by California code,
we have to deepen the pool.
The water has to be at least eight feet deep
anywhere the bulkhead's going to be positioned.
So that seven foot competitive water now has to be eight feet and the bulkheads positions
can only be where it's that eight feet or deeper if we had shallow areas and stuff you
would not be able to use it.
Does that answer your question about stretches?
Any other?
While we're on the bulkhead.
So it hasn't been ruled out so to speak.
Is that correct?
Council have not made a decision on the bulkhead. It'll be one of the items that we take to
them on March 5th. Okay. So I have a couple of questions all over the block here. So I'm
just going to start at the top of my list here, go down here. The first is regarding
the current channel versus a lazy river. I understand a lazy river requires a lot of
lifeguards to support. Does a current channel require a lot of lifeguards?
Short answer is no. It's the shortest answer you'll get from me all night tonight. No the
answer is that it may require a lifeguard but no unlike a lazy river
where you're gonna have multiple guards all around the the lazy river that's not
required in our current channel. Okay and another question about that rec pool.
Looking at the diagram it looks like there's a can't quite tell if there's a
small gap between where the lane swimming is is that correct that little
gap there yes about six feet or something like that it's actually 12
feet that opening okay but for all intents and purposes you've got six very
usable 25 yard lanes at seven feet wide is that correct that is correct yeah and
what's not shown there the the T's you see in the bottom are actually the
center of the lane so you'll have a floating lane line that would be on the
outside of that lane up by the current channel space so that it's not like
somebody would accidentally swim into the wall or something if we were using
that for lap swim or lane use. So you could have your backstroke markers and
everything for both sides? Absolutely yeah we would have them set up for that.
and the little foot at the bottom left of that what is that the left the bottom
left of the lap area that's again the walkout stairs that California code
requires us to have okay so that it's it's whited out it's not in the pink
but again those are our walkout stairs also the because of the one in twelve
slope for that beach entry, that does not qualify as an ADA ramp.
So both of these pools are large enough, they're larger than 300 perimeter feet which by ADA
regulations says we have to have two means of ADA access to the pool.
We have to have a lift or a ramp as a primary.
So both of these pools would have a battery operated lift that would allow patrons to
get in and out, but stairs with double handrails 24 inches apart and low risers
is an approved secondary means of ADA access. So in both pools we have stairs
which meets the California Building Code requirements. We can put the double
handrails and now we're meeting our ADA requirements as well in that design.
Okay great. I noticed that three foot six inch depth on one end for California
compliance and the deeper end is 5 is that correct.
That's still being discussed on the deep end whether we want
to go 5 feet as the deep end for use or if we want to go
to anything deeper for water aerobics and some stuff like
that. That's I don't know that that's been finalized yet.
OK. And then I think I had a couple questions on the 50
meter pool. You may have already answered them.
Let me just check the lane widths for the 25 yard set up are eight in all of the deep
water lanes.
It's eight foot wide lanes.
And then when we went to the shallow water, that's where we shrunk those to seven foot
wide lanes, which is between shrinking the stairs and then shrinking the lanes.
We were able to add two more lanes into the 50 meter pool so that we could get that total
of 20 lanes in the pool.
And that compares to the current.
Clark set up is eight is it eight feet for all
lanes or not.
No Clark the 50 meter pool is eight foot lanes
on the short course of the 50 but there's seven
foot lanes in the 25 meter pool at Clark now.
Okay.
Does the 50 meter pool as design meet. F.
I. N. A. Standards. Yes.
And which standard is it.
Well, that's FINA standards.
Right, but there are various levels of FINA standards.
Well, there's basically two levels of FINA standards.
So FINA has the NC, the National Championship,
which is intended for master's, National Championship,
or for Olympics, international swimming.
And then they have their standard,
the general standards for pools.
And that's what we meet.
That is correct.
According to the plan.
OK.
So when we looked at, sorry to interrupt.
I'm sorry.
So looking at the standards, what we identified were the FINA, which are the international
standards, USA Swimming, Diving, Water Polo, their standards, and then also in what we
call CIF, here is the National Federation of State High Schools, making sure that we
complied with all three competitive standards.
So whether we want a high school swim meet event here, USA Swimming, or to the FINA rules
themselves.
Thanks for the clarification, that's great.
It may be too early to know, but based on the changes of the amount of water we have,
our expected operating costs of just maintaining that water with the pluses and minuses of
depth, temperature, et cetera, et cetera, expected to be higher or lower.
Right now we're expecting it to be just slightly lower, notwithstanding increase of rates,
right, escalation of what's happening.
So the main operating expense for a public swimming pool
is water surface area.
And that is heat loss, water evaporation, chemical use.
All of that's more than 95% predicated
on the surface area of water, not the depth.
So fortunately, going into the 50 meter pool,
where we go to your current 50, which is shallow,
and now we're going to go to a lot more water, fortunately,
that water down in the bottom doesn't use up a lot of energy.
it's not evaporating all of those things.
The reduction is gonna be the fact
that we can go to heating systems
where we take a look at the heating system you have now
and it's operating at about an 80% thermal efficiency.
And the new heating system that we would propose
if it goes as a gas system
would be up to 97% thermal efficiency.
The filter system that you have now,
currently you have an old approach
which was to take all those pools
and they're all co-mingled as a single body of water.
Code doesn't allow you to do that today.
Code says each one of those pools
has to have its own independent system.
So the problem is when you co-mingle the water,
are we gonna keep it 80 degrees
so that the swim team's happy?
We're gonna have it 85 degrees
so our senior fitness folks are happy?
Or we say, we'll put it in the middle,
that way everybody's unhappy
because nobody gets what they want, right?
But this allows us to control the temperatures
without doing it to all of the water of the pool.
We also get into variable frequency drives,
motor efficiencies, and all these things
that we have the opportunity to bring in stuff
that's a lot more efficient,
even though we've got more water to the facility.
Great, okay, thank you, that's great.
I don't want to leave out our landscaping person,
so I do have one question for them.
the landscaping for the plan particularly around the 50 meter pool how
does that size compare to Clark that's a little bit of a difficult question
because of the way Clark is configured versus this one we do have a table
showing how they compare not by area though but our we have adjusted the plan
to create as much lawn area around the 50-meter pool for that spillover activity, and we keep
adjusting that. We actually moved the mechanical building. It was down by the pool deck. We moved
it up, thank you, Janine, up over toward the new parking lot, the brown building on the bottom
right-hand corner. So that opened up a lot of green space that you can see above that adjacent
to the 50-meter pool. So we actually do have quite a bit, but I'd have to take the square footage and do
per area. But overall we do have more landscape now right yeah. And whoever put the outdoor
showers are to be complimented that's a wonderful feature. I believe that's required right. Great.
I do have a that's the only landscaping question I had. I do have a programming question.
Are all the activities and the hours consumed by the various
user groups down to the levels of aqua nuts masters wreck
swimming layman swimming everything else all the hours
that go into that and the capabilities to handle that
in terms of the structures going to be
available with the new plan.
Yes. So the purpose of the programming and all
of the diagrams were to do these various test
fits to make sure that we could accommodate all
of the activities demonstrated here and our
aquatics
Program lead also developed a spreadsheet to demonstrate a
Scheduling and how that could occur in the various lanes to accommodate all of these programs and I think Kevin Safeen would like to say something about
Thank you commissioner or for the record Kevin Safeen director of arts and recreation
We have worked closely with the aquatic foundation to
Determine as much as we can how this future facility?
Recognizing that this is gonna open in 2027. So we don't know exactly how it's gonna work for years from now. So conceptually
We believe we can accommodate
Accommodate the existing programs that are in the pool specifically the teams as well as the other activities
It will not be hour per hour
Replicating what we have today with what we're doing in the future
But we're trying to maximize that as much as possible looking at every single season
looking at the long course looking at short course looking at the recreational pool looking at what
With all of those three pools combined. We think we can accommodate the existing programs today
And we are working diligently toward maximizing the amount of time that each of those uses can have
Recognizing that we're going from more pools to less but more water. And so there's a balance there
So follow up on that Kevin
Does that mean some activities that currently may be?
being performed at certain times at
Clark would have to move to Larky
We haven't determined that yet. The activities would likely be able to remain in their current location
It's just a matter of how much time
Between the hours of 4 and 7 p.m. Weekdays, it's very busy and so especially when we do things like long course
It's tough to fit everything in at the same time that we do today
And I'll come back to this word. We're trying to balance as much as we can all of the programs that we run today
The swim teams as well as community activities
So again staff is working closely with the aquatic foundation
We provided a conceptual schedule and we will continue to refine that
As much as we can to meet the goal of the MOU which is to accommodate the existing program
Okay. Thank you
And then a one general question in terms of the current plan as it exists that you've presented to us tonight
does that fit within the budget in terms of total expense that we have estimated for this project?
Yeah so everything that we show you tonight in the plan is within the budget that was presented to
council in February 2023. Okay so we're where we where we want to be in terms of budget in terms
of operating expense in terms of programming requirements for the current and future potentially
we don't know what the future will bring but certainly there are other things that will happen.
Yeah we haven't analyzed the operating budget I believe so I think Kevin wants to speak up to that.
So there's two costs related to this project, right?
There's the capital cost construction,
then there's operating.
So we've determined for the most part
what those capital costs are.
This is not an insignificant project, right?
This is being had in a price like $77 million.
And of that, most of that is going to our construction.
There's soft cost, there's design, there's everything else.
Beyond that, we're working on
what those operational costs could be.
You asked the question about
what's the impact of heat loss and all that.
So we're studying all those as well as the revenue
that's coming to the facility.
So as we continue to refine this project,
we will know much more as we get to the next year
or so what those true operating costs are.
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Meyer, do you have any questions?
Could you please return to the slide
with just the pool view, not the two side-by-side views?
Thank you.
So with regards to the current channel,
that opening between the beach and place structure area
and the current channel,
what kind of barrier is gonna go there
to prevent, for example, kids going in during aerobic,
water aerobics classes, or just running into that area.
Is it just gonna be a simple rope,
or will there be something a little bit bigger?
There are rope anchors, and then various types of ropes,
or rope floats that go into that space.
We're not allowed by code, health code,
to put anything larger that someone might get entrapped,
or hit their head on, or things like that.
So the barrier there is gonna be floating lane lines,
floating rope ropes with the like football types of floats thank you and
then my other questions were about kind of the decision behind the depths in the
50 meter pool for example the diving depth why was the 13 feet chosen and
it's for example I've seen other diving facilities that support platform diving
and bigger diving programs so why not replace the three meter diving springboard
with a more robust platform structure that can have multiple features and then perhaps
make the diving space deeper to support that kind of program.
Sure.
So we just completed a new diving facility up at College of Marin, for example, and if
we're going to have 10 meter platform diving, then we would have to have at least 15 feet
of water depth to support that.
There's a cost to build it, to have to build something that much deeper.
The other thing is, is this a facility that we want a 10-meter dive tower?
The 10-meter dive tower itself, for example, we added a dive pool and dive tower at College
of Marin, and that was a $7.5 million line item to the construction budget for the facility.
So early on, this had been determined that this wasn't going to be a 10-meter dive tower
or a dive tower type facility.
In springboards, there are two dives.
the one meter and the three meter when I was a kid we referred to it as the low
dive and the high dive but so that's what we're supporting here if we want a
one meter diving board then our depth needs to be 12 feet and if we want a
three meter springboard it needs to be 13 we actually will be 13 feet three to
13 feet six at the drain the very deepest part of the pool itself but the
the preponderance of that deep floor would be at 13 feet deep.
To go anything deeper, we certainly could.
It's just a matter of it doesn't really serve any other program for added expense.
Okay, thank you.
And then my other question was, there is still room if we were to expand the seven foot area
of lanes into the shallow end a bit more, particularly because the recreational pool
has many shallow lanes, and so I just see a lot of concern because there's going to
be water polo, and artistic swim, and speed swim.
So would it help, do you think, to add
a few more of those deeper competitive swim
levels that planes in?
Sure, it's always a matter of balance.
I mean, it's always where we start.
We can start from the shallow end and work deep.
We can work from the deep end and work shallow.
In terms of the balance of this facility,
it really becomes an issue of that 50-meter pool of,
do we want to have rec swim?
Do we want to have swim lessons?
Do we want to have other types of programs
that might occur in that?
And if they're not the competitive venue items,
then oftentimes that all wants to be water
that's five feet deep or less.
So it really becomes a matter of how many people
might be out here using the facility,
and how do we reach out to the community for that support?
So that's kind of what drove the decision
on how many lanes might we need for lessons
and all of those.
Swim lessons are the single largest money generating program
that a city can have in a public swimming pool.
But in terms of that, to your point, yeah,
code says that we have to have not less
than that one in 10 slope.
That basically means that we could get by
with three lanes at the end,
if we were gonna meet just the code minimum,
not withstanding what programs
and what can we do in the pool at that point,
if it is shrunk down to something like that.
But could the rec programs also use the deeper lanes,
if the deeper lanes were expanded?
It depends on the rec program.
I mean, children or adults that can't swim,
no, they can't go into that part of the pool.
And so, and in terms of recreation,
how long are you going to play
when you're having to tread water?
I know I'm not going to last very long out there anymore
if I'm going to be in that deep water,
unless I got floaties or something going on here.
But so, in terms of the recreation,
yeah, there's some things we could get into.
You know, we've identified 50, 60 different
aquatics programs that we've seen across the country.
So, I mean, it could be recreation programs
such as battleship, where teams get into canoes
with buckets and you're trying to throw water
into the other team's canoe to sink their boat,
sink their battleship.
And if all of those are accomplished swimmers,
that could happen in deep water.
If they're not, then it wouldn't be able to be held there.
It would have to be in shallow water as a program,
for example.
So there are a lot of programs,
but generally the recreation programs
are much more tailored to shallow water
than they are deep water.
Thank you for that explanation.
And then my last question was,
just because there will be a lot of people
coming in and out of both pools,
and I know there was some earlier discussion
about regulating temperatures,
is there any room or capacity to put in
maybe a jacuzzi to store some of the people
while waiting to go into pools for competitions, for example?
So we certainly could, in terms of using a jacuzzi
or a hot tub, as we call them, a spa.
First of all, that is a line item on a commercial pool
like this, that's about a $400,000 to $500,000 line item
to meet all the health code requirements.
The challenge we have with hot tubs or spas or jacuzzis,
as we call them, is that when we put it in a public venue
like this, the ones that really love to do it
are the kids that are cold and chilly,
and they want to go jump into this hot tub and get warmed up.
And then as an adult, we look at these kids
that are quite relaxed sitting in this spa or hot tub,
and it's like, well, I don't know
why I want to get in that water at this point.
Because of the children use, if we have children using it,
we normally say we're going to regulate the maximum water
temperature to 100 degrees. For a lot of adults that's warm bath water, whereas if
it's an adult spa we would heat it up to the code limit of 104 degrees. So
for example that Carlsbad pool that I mentioned they did a spa at their
facility but they fenced it off so that children aren't allowed so that adults
would want to use it in that event but then it really then becomes under
utilized in terms of what they have.
So certainly can look at using hot tubs or spas,
but in of itself, it's got its own programmatic challenges
we have to come up with.
OK.
Thank you.
And I actually have one more question.
Is this going to be a chlorine pool or a saltwater pool?
Well, saltwater pools are chlorine.
One of the misnomers is that we can go to salt
and eliminate chlorine when salt, which is sodium chloride,
sodium and chlorine, is simply a chlorine delivery method
to the pool.
In large pools like this, the saltwater systems
don't lend themselves well to this type of an application.
And they don't lend themselves well for two reasons.
One, to make chlorine out of salt,
we go back to Michael Faraday, the famous physicist
that discovered the process of DC electrical current
in saltwater will liberate or disassociate
that sodium and chloride.
Well, that electrolysis that you put into the water
attacks anything metal.
So rope hooks to pump impellers to heat exchangers
all become sacrificial anodes
and get eaten up in the process.
The second is in terms of water quality,
our ability to maintain what we call hypochlorous acid
or free chlorine in the pool
is what's critical to not smelling chlorine
or not having any of the negative effects of chlorine.
Salt systems don't turn themselves up and down
to be able to regulate.
And we look at the amount of the pouring that that pool would need right now with nobody
in it versus the 4th of July at three in the afternoon.
It's a great variant so and again the salt systems don't lend themselves well to that
type of an application backyard residential pool.
They can work fine.
Now just a couple final questions and we'll move on to public comment.
So the 50 meter pool is going to be elevated.
correct and does that mean there's a fence around it? The entire deck and
everything is elevated not the pool itself. Correct I don't understand that but the
deck there would have a barrier of some kind or? Yeah so we've been talking about
the idea of having fences that would allow us to separate this that we can
have gates that would close off if we wanted to be able to isolate that space
or they open up. You can see a ramp up at the top of the page between the two
pools. Yeah right there and then there's also a couple sets of stairs that would
allow us to transfer up and down. We thought that also helped though by
creating just a natural separation between the two where we've got families
and children versus the other areas. It might help self-regulate it by doing
that as well. Okay, which I get visually that that helps the site, but I'm just
curious whether do you have to then put a fence to keep people from falling off
of it? No, because you've got stairs or you would have, you wouldn't have sharp
drop-off edges. You don't have sharp drop-off edges. Right, I mean, otherwise yeah, I guess that would be protected, yeah. Okay, and then on the pool, the
recreational pool, you've already answered a little bit of my questions on the
operating costs. But is the beach entrance going to include sand? No. Okay. So it's a
good question. I mean, I use the term beach or beach type. You meant by slope. Yeah, it's
just that gentle walk in slope, but no, no sand. Okay. Because I know that can cause
a lot of problems with filters and apply management and etc. So good. I'm that's good. I think
I think other than that we've covered everything I had.
So thank you very much.
Perfect. Thank you.
Hey, we'll now turn to public comment.
Does it if well do any members of the public wish to provide public comments?
You'll have two minutes.
We'll go with the cards first.
Secretary. Secretary Ballinger, could you?
Yeah, so the proposal is that we take the.
teams or the folks that are speaking for a group first and so the first speaker
that we have is Bob Lynchee with the Walnut Creek Chamber and Visitor Bureau
and they'll be allowed 10 minutes but they don't have to take the whole 10
and then nobody else from their group will be speaking. That's right.
Chair Garland and members of the Commission my name is Bob Lynchee. I'm a
I'm the president and CEO of the Walnut Creek Chamber
of Commerce and Visitors Bureau.
The Chamber exists as a convener of leaders and influencers
to make things happen, a champion for a strong community
and a catalyst for business growth.
Tonight I'm here to provide our official position
for the Chamber and Visitors Bureau
and why I emphasize the Visitors Bureau
that will come as part of my discussion tonight.
Our direct involvement with this process began in 2021
when the city of Walnut Creek was embarking
on the Your Parks, Your Future initiative.
And obviously 2018 is when that process began.
We were part of engaging sectors of the community
including business and organizations
for a discussion.
This process also highlighted community's perspective on a potential revenue measure
to replace the aging infrastructure of parks, athletic fields, community buildings and other
related facilities identified in your park's future.
To gain insight into the community's priorities, EMC consulting was engaged.
you may remember that process,
determine whether revenue measure was possible.
EMC research and the chamber conducted surveys
and revealed public safety was paramount
along with swimming, soccer, softball meeting spaces
and downtown considerations.
We consistently communicated these findings to the city
and we were happy to report that there was a strong favoring
of a revenue measure to support these types of activities.
On the Visitor Bureau side,
Walnut Creek Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau,
this is a relationship between the city of Walnut Creek
and the Tourism District where hotels are assessed.
And one of our major objectives
in working with the Visitor Bureau
is to attract sports tourism.
This includes activities such as competitive swimming, soccer,
meeting, conference spaces, other sports events resulting
from the Heather Farm expansion.
We strongly believe that this proposed aquatic center has the
potential to establish Walnut Creek as a preeminent venue for
major swim events.
And this in turn would benefit local business, potentially
boost hotel occupancy and optimize the return on investment for our citizens
and taxpayers. We also acknowledge that the benefits to other sports activities
including the sports mall at Shadelands. It is essential to acknowledge that the
city of Walnut Creek must find a balance between community needs athletic and
sports activities and visitor accommodations within the available
funds we we discover that during this process of a lot of competing interest
we appreciate the consultants that have come forward to present a worthwhile
project and we hope that these efforts will find a balance within our community
and I'm prepared to answer any questions thank you for the opportunity our next
speaker is Mike Heaney with the Walnut Creek Aquatics Foundation.
Thank you guys. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you. I just want to clarify you.
I have a 10 minute period of speaking for the foundation. I won't use all of it I hope.
So interestingly I came here and I am not a pool expert such as Dennis. However, I have
a lot of experience with pools in one capacity or another. I've been around them for the
the last 54 years as a learning to swim student in Walnut Creek, a competitive swimmer in
Walnut Creek, a lifeguard for the city of Walnut Creek, a pool manager for the city
of Walnut Creek, a coach of teams in Walnut Creek, and as the representative of the Aquatic
Foundation. During my years of competitive swimming and travels, I've been around the
country, and a lot of local facilities and have seen just what great resources they can be.
I'm super excited about where we are today, and I'm standing here asking for more,
but I just want to be clear that from where we were five or six years ago looking at a 25 meter
pool to replace the current facility in Walnut Creek, we've come deep some bounds. But it's
It's certainly important that we have and take into this some good perspective.
In 2009 there was an aquatic needs assessment and again the your parks your future study
that was done prior to this planning both indicated a need for growth of aquatic facilities
and our organization supports and advocates for that growth.
Now we've gotten to where maybe we are almost on level playing field with what we currently
have.
But that too is a little misleading when we look at our historical perspective.
When the Clark Swim Center opened in 1970, it opened as a vibrant, multi-purpose, multi-generational
three-pool facility.
And it provided critical opportunities to the entire community.
When it opened, it had three water slides, it had four diving boards, a functioning snack
shack, and attractions in a park-like setting that drew recreational users from all over
the Bay Area.
When I worked as a lifeguard in the city of Walnut Creek, frequently on weekends we would
have to limit the capacity of people coming into the facility because it was so popular.
It also offered a state-of-the-art competition facility that hosted local, large, local,
regional, and national events that drew thousands of visitors to Walnut Creek, up to 15 weekends
a year, and sometimes for long, extended weekends of three or four days.
Fast-forwarding 54 years to where we stand today, 2024, the population of Walnut Creek
is more than doubled. And due to the age, changing health and safety codes and deferred
maintenance of the facility, the facility can no longer provide the experiences it did
when it initially opened. Time has created these limitations and not a desire to offer
a better experience. Over the past year, only two local competitions were held at the Clark
swim center none of them that brought the tourism to Walnut Creek that the
chamber spoke of. There's also a growing need for many resources beyond
competition. For example, city-offered swim lessons are impacted, residents
looking to teach their children to swim get turned away during the summer season.
They have trouble signing up for class after class to continue their learning.
Demand is so high for these lessons that private swim schools have opened in
Mona Creek to serve that need. Water aerobics classes are underserved,
recreational space is underserved, and frankly due to the age of the facility
it's not as exciting as it used to be. As we look forward from where we are
here I ask us to look to the year 2078 because that's 54 years from now. As we
opened in 1970 we're moving forward the same amount and consider what the
population is going to look like in 2078 and Walnut Creek and anticipate how this facility
will function. So in listening to Dennis, he is a true expert. Thank you. I learned
a lot. Chlorine, salt, that was good. We've talked tonight about a two-pool design. And
in those two pools, we've spoke of recreational pools and a 50-meter lap pool. What we haven't
spoken of as competition facilities. And my understanding is that there is such a
thing as a competition facility and Dennis mentioned that Public Health
Code requires three and a half feet at a portion of the pool and I'm sure in a
multi-use type facility that is true but I attend competitions all over the Bay
Area where three and a half feet of water is not the standard. Campbell
into high school has a minimum of seven feet.
And Dennis, you mentioned the College of Marin,
which does not have a three and a half foot space in it.
And those were just recently built facilities.
So a competition facility can look different.
And how that impacts what type of meat
you bring to a city is quite large.
So the impact on financing mechanisms.
So Measure O is primarily the resource
that we'll pay for this new facility.
We understand that our contribution is fairly small
in comparison to what Measure O is doing for us.
But by using sales tax dollars,
we should be looking at bringing people to Walnut Creek
to help spend dollars to go towards that sales tax.
When the foundation entered our MOU for $3 million
with the city of Walnut Creek,
We did so as a rescue agreement.
We saw the city facing a 25 meter facility
that would greatly underserve the community.
So we stepped forward into this agreement
to rescue what we could,
which is the two pool facility that we're looking at.
Also in terms of financing,
anchor tenant swim teams are tagged in the MOU
as backstops to the contribution from the WCAF.
As those backstops,
Having reduction in usage to the facility
and the inability to host revenue-generating meets
will keep them financially unsound
as a backstop for this MOU.
So the WCF has submitted six detailed asks,
and I know you've read them
because many of your questions spoke to them,
and I appreciate that,
on how we see improvements to the 12.9 design,
or 12.19 proposed design,
and some spreadsheets trying to show
how the current facility operated when opened,
how it's developed, and what we feel is critical
for you to consider for your planning.
So I'm happy to answer questions if you like.
Hey, Mike.
Hi.
Good to see you.
Thanks for being here and educating us on this.
And I'll bring in Kevin in on this too.
In the your parks for your future guiding principles,
it states that we're to prioritize support
of existing programs and facilities maintenance,
including the possibility for future program expansions.
What type of future programs expansions
does the current design provide?
I don't see any.
Okay.
Kevin, do you have any comment on that?
Right, as Dan has showed,
there are opportunities for water polo.
You don't have currently the space,
which is always gonna be a challenge for water polo,
or necessarily the proper design.
Similarly the pool is deeper, which allow for more opportunity for dive starts.
There are other opportunities that Dennis might be able to speak to in terms of the time so
that I can't think about the top of my head but I'm sure that Dennis does as part of his
his works if you like Jason, sorry Commissioner Cook to learn more about that we could have
Dennis speak to that.
Jason, excuse me, I spoke too quickly.
This design does a lot for recreation and it and I'm very grateful that it does that
because that's going to serve our community very well so there is a lot that that that
is improved from what we currently have.
Yeah, I think Kevin hit on the majority and that is with this pool, it's now deeper to
meet code for diving to actually have swim meets that we envision having it parked now
that technically our code says you can't have there.
So long course swim meets, short course swim meets, water polo, you know the deeper water
to be able to support synchro or other things going on in the pool at the same time for
all things that we've done.
What we haven't done is going in and said let's do a second additional 50-meter pool
or things like that that, you know, weren't within budget and weren't within the directive
that we were given to work with before.
Dennis was there a budget specifically for the pool?
Because while this is a, we're talking about a $77 to $80 million project, $50 million
of it is buildings and not the pool, right?
Yeah, I don't have the overall breakdown, but yes, that was all part of this was to
come in and say what do we have in site? What do we have in buildings? What do we
have in aquatics and utilities and all those things as part of it? So as part
of that an overall budget was given to us and then we came back saying you know
you want a 50 meter pool, you want a 65 meter pool, here are the cost of these.
How does that fit into the budget here and does that make it break it or
whatever? And Commissioner Cook I know this is not question time, this is public
comment time but if you'd like it just for reference of the construction cost
which is about 53 million about half of that is aquatics and about half of that
is community center if that helps we didn't go into the saying it'll be split
50-50 it's kind of how it turned out we will have more detailed cost information
when I bring bring this to the City Council if we could the question should
be for the speaker and then we'll come back and we can always ask clarifying
questions of staff so if we just keep it I have one question for Mike have you
estimated what the cost would be to implement the six different
recommendations you have the incremental cost I have not that's kind of beyond my
purview and my expertise in terms of cost and estimating for facilities
You've looked at the six items I'm sure and some of them include the 52 meter stretch
facility that you guys spoke of earlier and asked questions about turning of the design
the layout perhaps to create more space for competition for more open flow of bodies through
the facility additional add-on to the recreational pool those things I know all will cost money
I do think there's a payout in terms of what you're able to do with the facility in the
long run, especially in terms of incremental revenue towards the city through event driven
revenue, much like the chamber spoke to.
So I think there's an offset with that in terms of what will be made in return for that
investment that is worthy of doing it.
However, I have not researched the cost of it now.
Chair, I know this isn't question time for staff.
If you hold that question for the end,
we've run some preliminary numbers on that
just to give you a range.
So, Commissioner Euler will be happy to answer that later.
Thank you.
I have a quick question actually.
Mike, thanks for coming up and thank you for everybody
for supporting, you know, but behind you.
A lot of the public comment and the letters that we received,
I'm not looking at them right now,
But the gist was that with the new design,
there's going to be less space.
There's going to be less full space and less deck space.
The numbers that I see on the presentation suggest otherwise.
And what I'm trying to understand is,
is it a matter of maybe not the space, but the programming,
or be able to have competitions happening more than we are now,
or the same amount as we are now?
Help me understand where the disconnect is between,
one side says it's more, another side says it's less.
So that's a really good question.
So programmatically, when we reduce from three pools to two,
right now there are different organizations
or different groups or different users
using specific spaces within pools.
When you close a single pool and you move that group
into the other body of water, there's
a push down the line into what the next thing is.
This facility hosted about 300,000 uses
over the last several years each year.
And so trying to fit all those uses into that space
is difficult. When the configuration of the pool
switches, for example, versus a long course training period
versus a short course training period,
It's easy to look at lines on the bottom of the pool and say there are the same number
of lines even though they may not all be the same width, which is problematic, but that's
okay.
When you switch the layout and which way the pool is configured, those lines don't line
up the same way.
The space that would be used from the diving well moving to the 50-meter pool, well, that
would be bifurcated by the lanes running through it when the pool is set up in that direction.
So then that space doesn't exist anymore in that scenario.
So there are times of the year and different layouts of the pool that would impede that.
Also you know a lot nobody knows how this pool will be operated in 2027 as I spoke to
Kevin about but when you look at the program design layout it's obvious that we're trying
to shove things into spaces. It's not flexible. There's not room for growth. There's not
room for expansion. And there's a lot of compromise that happens when trying to make it all fit.
But honestly, that compromise happens now. The programs that use this facility now are
already impacted. There are waiting lists to get on these teams. There are waiting lists
for swim lessons. So we're already at capacity let alone trying to fit it in different directions
is difficult. Competition wise if I could real quick have you guys look at the short
course diagram slide that was offered up. When we talk about competition and what can
to be done with this facility.
It's possible to get that slide.
Oh, yeah, thanks.
So when we talk about the type of events
that can be held at this facility,
the diagram shows two six-lane, 25-yard courses
available for competition.
And those are the darker pink and the 50-meter pool.
And I just want to note that one of those
sits next to an end wall of the pool where officials,
referees can stand and operate the management of the meat.
The other is in an island in the middle of the pool,
and there's no way to actually operate meat
in that middle course because there's,
unless the officials and et cetera are standing in the water.
So that's an unusable course as we look at it.
In terms of the type of meets that would bring revenue
to the city, understand that 20 lanes of competition
is pretty standard for a large meet, a regional meet.
And having diving ability at both ends of the 50 meter pool
is pretty standard for large regional competitions
that are two to three overnight stays.
And that's important to us.
That's important to the city, I believe, too.
A couple of numbers for you,
2022 Sports Travel Magazine studies,
and this is the Travel Sports Tourism Industry Magazine,
estimated that there's $317 per overnight stay per athlete
that attends a competition.
Day trippers, local meets alone,
spend about $79 a day within your city.
So when we look at the facility as is,
with nine available long course diving from one end
but not the other.
And only six to maybe 10
shore course competition lanes available.
You're talking about 400 athletes at a weekend meet
versus 1,000 to 1,500 for a full facility.
If that's important too.
Let's move on to our next commenter.
Our next speaker is Kim Krapst, and the speaker after that,
is Leo Lin.
Hi, guys.
Kim Probst.
I'm representing the Walnut Creek Aquanaut
says their head coach.
And we've tried to limit redundancy,
sort of just try to speak to one particular topic.
And so as far as the proposals that the Aquatics Foundation
sent to you guys, and the piece of the puzzle
that I'm going to speak to tonight
is the second pool or body of water, which
It's really primarily compromise of recreational water
space in the current plans.
In reality, it almost takes us from the three pools
we have today down to one usable pool.
And we know that we've been told for 14, 15 years now,
we understand we have to compromise
and we'll have to sacrifice with the new facility.
But this is a big one when you're
talking about how we'll actually work day to day.
So the Aquatic Foundation came back
and we proposed to rotate the layout of the second pool
and add more lanes and deep water in some of those lanes.
In the addition of these lanes and the depth
in some of the lanes would create
a multifunctional second pool with lots of flexibility
for all sorts of activities,
similar to what we have at Larky Pool today.
And we're able to happily pack Larky Pool
with kids learning to swim and kids having play time
as well as athletes training for local
and national competitions.
And without these proposed expansions to the second pool,
there'll be seasons throughout every year,
for example, Longhorse,
where we simply won't all fit Rec and teams alike.
So this is an important community investment
with outdoor activity opportunities
for kids and adults alike.
And in Walnut Creek, we've built an aquatic empire here.
And unfortunately, even with the passing of Measure O,
we're not sitting here tonight
asking for a world-class facility
for these world-class teams,
where we could hope to grow and host exciting events
like so many other towns across the state and country.
We're just asking for the bare minimum
to keep our current membership training.
Our next speaker is Leo Lin.
And then, Kristen McFarland.
Hello, my name is Leo Lin.
I've been a swim meet officials for 20 years.
I've officiated swim meets from the local level,
happening in Heather Farm to national levels
at the facility that was talking about the Miwok Center
up in Novato, the Santa Clara facility that just closed.
In fact, I was the meat referee
for the last big meat that was going down there.
And I'm also officiated meats at different places
like Federal Way, top of the class.
And what I'm seeing,
and I have only two minor questions to ask,
Dennis is very opposed to bulkhead.
I don't know how much poo he has been in.
Swim Life Got Sinking bulkheads is an accident.
Type of poos that happens all the time,
bulkheads are changed.
In fact, at the Berkeley Speaker Center,
the bulkhead serves a real good function
of separating one 15 meter poo
in the two separate program happening at the same time.
One side could be used for competition
and the other side use for warm up.
So completely separate the thing.
And you can have two swim meet,
or one swim meet with two courses going on the same time.
The investment of programming,
or the bulkhead in the programming, for example,
in during summertime, you could have kids swimming
and one end rectum swimming the other.
In fact, two rectums can be swimming in the same pool,
completely, physically separated by the bulkhead.
Now I can tell you what's the problem with the bulkhead,
is keeping kids from swimming underneath it.
We constantly have to yell at it, so that's a down start.
But moving a spout kit, and I've seen it done
almost every meet, takes about 10 minutes
and two person who knows, just because one guy
runs a car into the wall, you don't ban all the cars.
That's the one thing.
Then the other question I'm not at all clear about
is seven lanes, seven feet lanes and eight feet lanes.
You cannot have a pool with two different lane lines.
The lanes are marked on the bottom of the pool.
You cannot move them.
Thank you.
Hello, my name is Kristen McFarland.
I am a Walnut Creek resident and have swum
at Clark Memorial Swim Center for over 24 years.
Clark is where, at the age of three, I learned how to swim.
My parents moved to Walnut Creek in 1999
and immediately signed my sister and I up for swim lessons,
which took place in the shallow Wade pool.
Clark is where I swam during summer camp as a kid.
Walnut Acres Daycare brought us to the pool
for summer field trips where I played in the Wade pool
and jumped off the diving boards of the dive pool.
Clark is where I attended the Walnut Creek
all city meet for recreational swim teams.
This event was a highlight of every summer
bringing together the Walnut Creek swim community.
Clark is where I swam for Northgate High School.
For two of those years I was coached
by Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation President Mike Heaney.
Clark is where I completed my lifeguard training
and certification.
Lifeguarding was my first official job
teaching me valuable life skills as a teenager.
Clark is where I now practice
with the Walnut Creek Masters swim team.
I moved away for 10 years and found myself back at the pool
this past November swimming under coach Mike.
Masters fosters an incredibly welcoming and fun environment
making me excited to come to the pool each day.
Upon joining, I was surprised at how even in the depths
of December, the pool is full at all times of the day.
It'll be 5.30 a.m. on a Monday, the pool is full.
6.45 p.m. on a Thursday, pool is full.
The proposed pool design does not appear
to meet the existing or long-term needs
of any of the programs
that utilize Clark Memorial Swim Center.
My childhood experiences and enrichment
would not have been possible without
the three separate pools and programming
that Clark Memorial hosts.
In closing, I support the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation proposal and encourage the city
to adopt the proposal.
Thank you.
The next speaker is Nick Arneson, and then the speaker after that is Audrey G.
Hello, my name is Nick Aronson, I live in Walnut Creek.
I'm not a swimmer, I don't really care very much about swimming.
What I do care about is good governance, and obviously we're going to spend a lot of money
on a new facility here, and I think it's pretty obvious from the analysis that's been done
that we're going to have less capacity than we had before and less capacity going into
a growing population with new needs is bad governance.
So we do seem to have a number of other facilities.
I think another big aspect of this project is the conference centers and other areas.
It seems to be bifurcating these hearings, this one and the other one.
It seems kind of crazy because it's one big facility, and so I'm not sure about the other
uses that are planned, the revenue from other uses, and this is a swim facility.
So having a discussion about a multi-use facility and breaking down the hearings into two different
sets of discussions really kind of robs everybody of understanding what's the real value quotient
here, what are we doing for the community, what's our real needs here, what are we satisfying?
So feeling like we're getting less pool and less facility even though we're spending
twice as much money on other things that aren't swim related, this is a swim center.
So it just feels like from a governance point of view, it doesn't make sense as a Walnut
Creek resident.
Like I said, I don't really care much about swimming, but I do care about having world
class facilities and world class needs being met for the long term use of our city, and
It just doesn't feel like if we're getting all that,
that we need.
Hi, everyone.
Audrey G here.
Long-term Walnut Creek resident
and then also business owner, law firm founder,
current chair of the chamber,
past president of the Contra Costa Bar Association.
Thank you for the city staff
and all of your work that you're doing here
in building this wonderful,
wonderful program that we're having.
We're spending $76 million.
That's a whole lot of money.
So let's just make sure that we're getting it right.
And I want to make sure that, you know, aquatics here,
we've seen that it's overburdened, it's overbooked.
There's already people saying, there's like,
we already have three pools we can't fit all your uses in.
I think that there's just some small adjustments
that we can make to the current plan,
where we can actually incorporate more uses
and more revenues actually coming to the city
in terms of sports tourism.
Again, make it into 52 meters, so a stretch pool,
so we can also have the bulkhead,
And more importantly also deep water.
And so we can have deep water in the big pool.
And I think that's probably one of the most important
asks here, is that it is deep water.
I believe our pool consultant said that that's not going to
majorly going to increase the costs,
because costs are going to be surface water.
We're talking about depth here.
It's important, and Mikeenie had said,
for people to be diving from both ends,
to be capturing the three day meets that we want.
Three day tournaments, that brings in tons of revenues
to the city.
I sent some papers over to the city,
and it shows in terms of either $500,000 up to $25 million,
sometimes up to $50 million if it's
going to be a really big meet or tournament in one weekend, one
or two weekends.
So if you multiply that in terms of six big tournaments
in a year, 10 tournaments in a year,
that more than pays for itself in terms
of the people's concerns of the offsetting costs
and making sure that we're getting some revenue in terms
of our investment.
Let's just make sure that we're getting it right.
There's also been some costs in terms of making
the other smaller pool deeper.
We would like to have that as well
and make sure that the sink, row, and water pool
can have some space.
Thank you very much.
So just to remind everybody, and I know it's difficult
because people don't know the rules,
but Mike Heaney spoke for the Walnut Creek Foundation.
So if you're part of that foundation,
he was representing you.
And so now if you're speaking just for yourself,
you have the two minutes.
So that's why we're at the two minutes.
So the next speaker is Teresa Bronzeville.
And I'm sorry if I'm butchering your name.
And then the speaker after that is Brett Wideman.
Again, I'm probably butchering that, sorry.
Okay, thank you so much.
I do realize that this process
has been 15 years in the making.
And what's very frustrating about that is in 15 years,
we're still not building for tomorrow.
We're only building for what we can accommodate today.
Understanding the usage of the pool.
The one thing that you have to realize
is that the largest concentration of people
who are using the pools are the Walnut Creek Masters,
the Aqua Bears, the Aqua Nuts, the Lifeguard Training,
Scuba, and Aqua Size.
Seasonal is the swim lessons and rec.
The concentration of people who are using it
on New Year's Day, if it's open,
or the worst, I mean, I'd be swimming today
if I had the opportunity to do it.
Designing a pool to accommodate what we can no longer do
because the code is not the same is expanding
for better programs and expanding for the future.
It's deceiving to say that.
The other thing I would like to consider
is factoring Larkin in this whole process.
We have two pools, why are we not factoring that
into the overall program of the city of Walnut Creek.
You also are saying yes,
you've increased the volume of the pool,
but you actually have increased the usage.
So you only get one chance to do it right.
You can't build something to accommodate
what we can't even fix right now.
You have to build for the future.
And if you're not gonna do that,
then you gotta go back to the drawing board.
And the last but not least,
I know one of the things that they factored in
was the scoreboard, make it permanent,
it's an automatic pace clock.
It's gonna get used every single day, 365 days a week.
That's all I got.
Yep, and then the next speaker after Brett
will be Trevor Noflik.
All right, thank you.
Good evening, Chair Garland, commission members,
and city staff.
My name is Brett Kawakami.
I am the president of the Walnut Creek Aquinnets
and also the proud father of an Aquanaut.
My daughter has participated in WCA for over 10 years,
and this marks her final season with the club.
I've always said, you know, we want to make Walnut Creek
proud to have a truly world-class organization
right in their backyard, which we are.
A month ago, we lost our founder, Sue Alff.
She founded the Aquanauts over 50 years ago,
and we've produced many Olympic champions and coaches,
and we celebrated it recently, our 50-year anniversary.
wherever we compete in the in the country and in the world, we are well respected and we represent
Walnut Creek our hometown very well. Every Labor Day we give the wonderful gift of our awesome fall
show to the community and I think that's a truly unique thing that we we give to the community.
So I hope I painted a picture of what Walnut Creek means to WCA and what I hope WCA means to
to Walnut Creek.
I'm here tonight to express what we need
to continue the remarkable success
that we've had for the next 50 years.
First of all, I want to thank everyone who's been involved
in working to make our new Aquatic Center a reality.
City staff, consultants, we really appreciate that.
In order to continue access,
we need the appropriate facilities going forward,
and that's contained in the WCAF proposal.
Primarily for us what would help us is to have the recreational pool
lanes
Added to six lanes add four lanes added to make it ten lanes and also deep water
and this would allow us to replicate what we currently have with the diving well and
That's that's what we need to
Continue to be able to have continued the current level of programming. So I trust the Commission will consider an evaluated proposal
I think we're in good hands and I thank you very much
Hello Trevor could off look I'm a father of three boys who've swam and played water polo in Wama Creek
And I just want to add on to what my Keeney was saying and a couple other people as well
Today is that I think my Keeney has put together a counter proposal for deeper pool for a longer stretch
pool, I think it if
You consider that there's a lot of highly competitive athletes in this area
both swimming and water polo and I think a lot of people were talking about
swimming here today but the use groups currently at Heather farms as I
understand it are all swim I think artistic swimming as well as other
groups but water polo was mentioned a handful of times from a lot of people
here today as being considered for future however it sounds like there's no
time or they're going to be able to use the pool currently there's not enough
time for water polo programs to use the pool. And under the existing I think proposal it
sounds like even if the pool is built to that capacity there's still not going to be enough
room for water polo. Water polo is the fastest growing sorry in this area in the Pacific
zone for USA water polo members there's 10,000 USA water polo members here and none of that
has played at Heather Farms.
When there is competition, I think Audrey had mentioned,
if this gets part of a Junior Olympic program,
a larger program with a better pool,
it brings in quite a bit of people.
I was talking to a representative
at USA Water Polo today.
He said if this pool was built to where it could handle
a water polo, it would bring in 48 teams
during a four-day period,
Which brings 40 there's 15 people on a team.
And there's one and a half parents times that you're
talking about a thousand people coming into Walnut Creek
and staying here for that duration.
The next speaker is Steve Stahl and then Jeff.
And then Robert Arroyo is my last three speakers.
Hi my name is Steve Stahl.
I represent the Walnut Creek Masters.
I'm the co-head coach along with Mike Keeney.
Our coach for 40 years is sitting back there
listening to us today. Thank you very much.
Not to be flippant but as my drive here was taken
out in 15 minutes from Walnut Ave it reminded me
of this whole process going back 15 years how
difficult it is to get here and discuss our needs
and our wants while I was sitting on Ignacio I was
like wow it almost feels like what if we took the
three lanes on Ignacio that I'm not moving on
and turn it into two.
And I joke, but in all seriousness, for our program of which we have 500 adults currently
registered with us, most of them Walnut Creek residents, long-term Walnut Creek residents
of which I'm one, deep water, deep water, deep water, I think you're taking that deep
pool, making it disappear and asking for our programming to adjust.
I think if you were to ask Kevin or Karen about programming would we be able to fit
or have existing program with an all deep 50 meter pool, ideally additional lanes
in the lap pool, I think they would say yes, not to put words in their mouth.
If the pros commission suggests to city council and staff,
there's no doubt Dennis could design such a facility for us.
Again to our needs 25 meter me we have every October 400 400
out of towners come in.
Well I'd say our there's 400 adults that swim in that.
That that is impossible to do in the current
configuration unless we have a bulkhead.
We need to pull that into 25 meters.
That's a twenty thousand dollar fundraise for us.
Without that it's our major fundraiser.
We would love to have additional long course meets.
We cannot right now.
During practice times on Saturdays,
we take the entire pool and the aquanauts and the other pool.
I'm not sure where everyone's going to go.
I know that's my time.
Thank you very much.
Good evening.
I'm Jeff Bucky.
I'm with Walnut Creek Swim Club.
We represent the rec swimming community.
I'm also professionally I work for general contractor
planning and estimating construction project similar
to this.
So I have some experience that's somewhat relevant.
I started as a rec swimmer here.
I swam USS with alcobares, I swam masters,
I worked as a lifeguard and now,
even though I live in Lafayette,
my kids swim here in Walnut Creek
because this is important to our community,
it's a major thing.
So, from a major event standpoint,
I see this pool layout and while it does check the box
for what we need to run a meet,
it doesn't run that meet very well.
When we run this meet, Walnut Creek All-City Meet,
which I'm the director of.
We host about 1,700 swimmers for two days in late June.
And then late July, the Walnut Creek Swim conference
meet is similar, replicates the same, almost the same size.
This pool, the pool deck, it's hard to tell here
because it all looks flat.
But someone mentioned that it steps.
And the recreational pool area is lower.
Now, the pool deck is so cut up that there's
There's no real place to watch a mean.
You have those two small areas for bleachers,
but you can't see maybe 40, 60 people can stand there.
The rest of the people are gonna be
on the recreational pool area sunk below.
That makes it useless for watching a competition.
Also the recreational pool, the shallow end play area,
that is a liability when you're hosting a major swim meet.
Kids will be in there climbing around,
and so that whole area will have to be fenced off
and running it useless.
So I'm concerned with that.
I think by rotating it,
you could separate the recreational pool area away
from the competition and make it more useful.
So just to wrap up,
I know there's a lot of people here like me
who have swam in all these different organizations
and now have brought their kids back to do the same.
So we just want to make sure
that our kids can enjoy what we had growing up.
Thank you.
Next speaker is Robert Arroyo and then Heidi McMillan.
Hi, my name is Robert Arroyo.
I'm the CEO of Diablo Alliance Water Polo Club,
a former professional athlete,
former all-American athlete from Cal Berkeley,
and also a top 16 swimmer.
So I have interest in both swimming and water polo,
and a family of four children.
And so one of the things that I wanted to bring
just to your attention as far as
from the water polo standpoint is
the desire to rent more in the Walnut Creek area.
We're currently renting Northgate High School
and this past weekend we rented Los Lomas High School,
both in Walnut Creek, but we also had to rent pools
like Ohlone College and Newark High School
because there's just not enough water pool pool space
in the Walnut Creek area.
When you think about the impact that has on tax dollars
and hotel stays and things like that, obviously,
we had people coming from nine different states
with about 180 teams, which is roughly about 3,000 athletes.
So when you're running those numbers in your head,
if we had a more centralized location for the tournament,
that's where all the money would, the hotel stays,
and money and revenue and stuff would be at.
And that's where a majority of our water polo club
is based as well.
And so it's our interest to try to get more water polo
in this area and to be able to do that.
We need deeper water.
And so looking at, I mean, just the layout for the water pool
possibilities in the 50-meter course,
you're really looking at one water pool course.
And if you wanted to host something
like an Olympic Development National Championship,
you would need to be able to run two courses, which
could be done by having a net down
the middle of the 50-meter pool if it was all deep.
So giving an example of the Soda Center at Camp Alindo
is a perfect site that has hosted that before.
was instrumental in bringing that sort of program to deliver more area in the
past and I mean it's something that does generate a lot of money for for the
city. Thank you guys so much for your time. Thank you. My name is Heidi McMillan. I
pretty much have the same resume as Jeff. Born raised here, grew up here. Swimming
was a huge part of my life. I've been a coach here for the past 25 years in
rec as well as year-round swimming and I'm currently the president of Wanna
Creek Aquabears. I just want to reiterate as a board we kind of have two
goals. The first is to provide a great program for our swimmers and for our
community. The second goal is to make sure that we are physically responsible
so that we can continue that great program and not just this year but five
years and ten years because I've been a part of teams and I've seen teams that
five years from now they were doing great and all of a sudden they're not. It
can happen very quickly. Sadly this design doesn't allow us to do either of
those the new pool and the program breakdown that Kevin gave to us reduce
our space by 20 percent so like Mike said we're already at capacity you took
that into account and the narrower lanes it probably cuts it more to about 25
percent so you're asking us to have one out of four or five of our kids to say
sorry you can't be on our team anymore that's devastating and very sad to me I
I actually moved from Brentwood here before my oldest started high school and bought a
million and a half dollar home so that my kids could be on a better swim team.
That is why we moved here because I know that Walnut Creek is a community that supports
kids programming and I knew that we were going to get the best of the best here so that's
why my husband owns a practice in Walnut Creek as well as in Brentwood and we decided to
move here because of that the second major concern that we have with the pool
design is that our team financially will not be able to host meets I know we
talked about hosting meets I've been at the two meets that we've hosted I have
five kids that participated in those meets I spent about $40 maybe at the
snack shack I have one kid that goes to all meets around the nation he's a elite
athlete and I spend about three to four thousand dollars at one competition and
so I leave you with that thank you so much. Next speaker is Christine Lee and
then after that it is Melissa Lening or Long. Sorry, can't read people's writing. Hello, I'm
I'm Christine Lee I'm a local physician homeowner and business owner for 25
years. I have two daughters on the Aquinnets. Aquinnets are amazing. 50 years of Olympians,
future Olympians and it all starts here. So I have some major concerns. Parking is terrible.
There's not enough parking for handicapped in the front. Also very dangerous that now
with the new design, the parking is very far away for all these young kids who have to
to walk across the street in the dark, very far at night.
The deck space is inadequate.
They definitely don't have enough deck space
to have their meets and shows.
There's not enough room for bleachers, the tables and tents.
At Heather Farms, they have a lot of lawn area
that everyone spills out to.
This is very, very limited.
There's no way that they can have their shows
with the current deck space.
Also, the aqua nets cannot be sharing the pool
with another team. We have acrobatics. They throw girls high up in the air 20 feet out,
20 feet high. They can land on an unsuspecting swimmer that's going underwater. So it's
a huge safety concern. You cannot have the aqua nuts sharing the pool. So you have to
make sure that they have the rec pool, they can be in the rec pool deep. If they're going
to be in the large pool deep, they have to be not in the pool with another team. It's
a huge safety concern. In fact, that's why there was problems with diving. You have someone
diving up in the air, there's a swimmer, you have them colliding, it's a catastrophe. Thank
you very much.
Hi, Melissa Leung. I actually live in Lafayette, but my daughter swims with those aqua nuts.
She spends a lot of time at Heather Farms practicing because they're an elite team.
I actually spend a lot of my time,
not in Lafayette, but in Walnut Creek.
Everything I buy is in Walnut Creek
because my daughter's here all the time.
So it's really important to me that she feels supported.
My extended family actually lives in San Francisco.
They will come to see her during the shows, fundraisers.
They will spend a lot more money than $80 a day.
I'm not sure who quoted that,
but they will go downtown Walnut Creek,
Go shopping in your elite shopping malls.
They will go to all the restaurants, all 10 of them,
and eat before the show.
After the show, they'll try to find an ice cream shop
or something and eat again.
So it's definitely a destination.
My daughter couldn't make it here today
because she was practicing.
But I wanted to tell you, I know we've
been talking about revenue and building
things and requirements.
But to her, it's her second home.
She spends so much time there, and she loves it there.
She sees her coaches who she loves.
She sees her teammates.
She loves the lifeguards.
She feels safe there.
She went to the Junior Olympics last year in Virginia.
Three different teams run now in the nation.
Stopped me and said, oh my god, you guys
are the Wanna Creek Aquanauts?
We come to Junior Olympics to watch you.
We come to watch your girls.
I mean, the pride on my daughter's face.
It was invaluable.
So to her, it's an emotional experience
to come to Heather Farms and swim.
And if you can keep her there, she would just be so happy.
Thank you so much.
The next speaker is Brian Bigelow.
And after that, Stephen Moore and then Kim Tavala.
Hi, my name is Brian Bigelow.
I'm actually a homegrown member of Walnut Creek, also a water polo dad.
Just to echo the sentiments that most people have brought up here, I mean, I believe we
have the ability to make a world class location here and it's just a simple fix.
It's just deeper water and it's, I don't think it's a lot to ask, you know, I'm constantly
driving to all kinds of cities throughout California,
typically water polo, and I'd love to be able to stay here
while we could spend my money here.
I think, you know, we are a,
such a huge aquatic super power here in the Bay Area
that, you know, let's put our best feet forward
and make a facility that can support us.
Thank you.
Hi, my name is Stephen Moore.
I'm a Walnut Creek homeowner and a business owner,
and I have two daughters swimming on the aqua nuts.
I'm also a board member of the Aquatic Trustee Foundation
that raises money for the Olympic team and others.
And I've had the opportunity through the last 10 years
or so to travel around the world
seeing competitions and pools in different locations
and comparing them to what we see here.
And for the size of this pool,
this is absolutely the worst competition pool
viewing possible.
No other pool out there this size has lack of stands,
space for swimmers and other things to accommodate and then the thing that most people are not
talking about I think it's the gorilla or channel in the room that is not part of the public outcry
I do not see that at the open houses we had they had board upon board of what people were saying
in commentary it was not a popular thing people wanted I don't know why we're spending money on
that when it's not called for I don't know what comments were released to the council but I have
They have photographs of all the boards of every comment,
and it was not wanted.
And having them connected to each other
really impairs any kind of real competition
used for that pool.
So once again, it needs more stands.
It needs more access for viewership for people to come in.
I mean, I've gone to pools in Croatia,
and they have big giant bleachers currently set up,
and that's a small country that doesn't have much money,
and their individual cities have that.
I've been to the championships in Canada for the world
competitions.
They have excellent facilities for viewership
where parents upon parents they have thousands
of parents able to visit these.
Not saying we need to do that but we didn't even
do better than this small bleacher temporary on the end.
Otherwise we're not going to get competitions.
It's not going to be worth it.
Our next speaker is Kim Cavallo.
And then after that Jane Lee.
Hello my name is Kim and I am a longtime
resident of Walnut Creek 15 years, and my daughter is on the Walnut Creek
Aquanaut, and I am here because I want to I'm concerned that the new design does
not accommodate the existing needs of the Aquanaut. I think the idea behind the
tax bill and why I voted for it was we thought we would at least get something
the same and better than what we have now, and I'm concerned that if the deck
space is lowered and if full space is lowered that the team is not going to be
able to have what they have currently.
For the swimmers, the coaches, the families,
I mean, the pool is their life.
It's their passion.
They spend countless days, hours in the rain,
in the cold, year round.
And even as a relative, family members come in
for all the meets.
And so to think that we're gonna have less pool space,
less deck space, that is a big concern.
As you've heard, the Walnut Creek Aquanauts,
I mean, their reputation every year,
they win national championships.
They send athletes to the Olympics.
The coaches have Olympic gold medals.
Every year athletes get scholarships to Stanford
and other universities.
And then how do they get rewarded?
They got a smaller pool and less space.
That seems, it doesn't seem right.
And so I really hope that you take that into consideration
with the new design.
Not to mention, in terms of recreation,
I live in Walnut Creek.
My neighborhood has three community pools,
tons of recreational pools all around the city.
There's Splash Bad and Cong, Splash Bad and Danville.
I never, those are never,
those are, most of those sit empty year round
until it gets hot.
My neighborhood pools, two of them never get used.
One gets used only on the hottest days.
This pool with competitive athletes
get used day in and day out.
And I don't think,
and I think that that needs to be a focus.
and at a minimum plan for the existing needs
and then the current future needs as well.
Hello, my name is Jane Lee.
I'm also a proud mom of Akonat.
I actually came here tonight to get educated
about this new facility, but while I was listening,
I wanted to raise a concern.
A lot of people, designer and also,
I think community members talked about revenues,
future revenues that will be brought in by these competitions and meets.
Just want to speak on behalf of the Wanna Creek Aquanaut, if we don't have a deep pool,
it's great.
I like all the big pool will be closed for meets where the Aquanaut's going to practice.
And one of the reasons that they're so good is because these girls practice a lot every
day year round.
If they don't have time or post-facility to practice, I don't know if they're going to
continue to be able to perform like this.
These are very dedicated girls.
They want to be the best.
So thank you very much for your consideration.
Our next speaker is Lewis Rogers.
And then Doris, Colin, Colin.
Hello.
My name is Lewis Rogers.
I'm a Walnut Creek master swimmer, and I'm here to voice my support for the 52-meter
bulkhead pool.
I grew up in Oregon, but I was born here in Walnut Creek.
My first lessons were at Wahl, at Larky, and I came down to visit my family here a lot,
my extended family, and I remember the pool at Heather Farm diving off the high dive and
always being very, very jealous of the facility that we had here compared to the indoor six-lane
pools that I had growing up.
So I spent 25 years of my life swimming back and forth,
and growing up I was very fortunate to find a group
of welcoming teammates and coaches
who made me feel at home.
When navigating the awkwardness of middle school
became very overwhelming, the pool became my safe place,
and it still is to this day.
Pools represent what is now kind of a mythical third place.
They are not work, they are not home,
they are not the mall, and they are not school.
They're multi-generational hubs where babies and seniors
and everyone in between can find peace, serenity, exercise,
and community.
And the primary purpose of these is
to improve everyone's wellness.
But sadly, we are losing third spaces,
and at a time of growing isolation.
What does it say about our community
and our collective values when we consider making drastic
changes that would severely impact
the quality of life of our community members?
What does it say to the children whose teams will
be pushed out of town or worse, left with nowhere to practice?
And what does it say to our coaches
who are ushering in a new generation
of world-class athletes?
Contra Costa is swim country.
Olympians, junior Olympians, national championships.
World champions have all come through Heather Farms.
And what does it say to our community members
who are clamoring for more space for lessons,
more facilities?
This is a generational decision
that we have entrusted you to make.
So thank you very much for hearing us out.
Hello, I'm Doris Kawakami,
and I live in Walnut Creek for over 15 years.
And I am a proud mother of a Walnut Creek Aquinnat.
And I just wanted to reiterate that I would love to see
the wreck pool expand to six lanes in deep water
for the needs of the Aquinnat.
And also deep water, more deep water in the 50 meter pool,
expand it to 52 meters and add the bulkhead.
And I wanted to thank you for clarifying
that that's not a lazy pool because Aquinnats,
we are not lazy.
Thank you.
So I apologize.
I'm having a hard time reading this writing, but it's Dari?
Dari.
Hi, all, and thank you, our coaches, who really fighting.
Everyone, I'm a mom of Walnut Creek,
I cannot go as well.
And everyone is telling us that we are working hard.
Just for you understanding, like five years old,
they're working two hours per day, three times per week.
12 years old, they're working four to five hours daily.
Up to six times per week.
Junior, it is eight hours per week.
And actually, every goal, like I can represent small one,
they have to dream.
And first, it's become an Olympian.
It is what is important.
And second, it's be back here at Walnut Creek
and participate in full show and say,
thank you, Coach Kim, thank you, every coaches,
You made me a limping here in this pool.
And with this project, you're killing both trips.
First, less hours, less work.
They will not have training capability.
Second, if you will make this deck space so small,
where they will be back, there will not
be a possibility to have full show for them.
And last point, we are also commuting from San Ramon.
Too many people from San Ramon, Dublin, Pleasanton, San
We're also driving here from Sacramento just to be here, to train here with the best coaches
and to have this possibility and opportunity in the future.
And we are really asking you to not go, to not proceed with this project, because honestly,
I don't know.
I'm in San Ramon.
I will be happy to have this pool there, you know.
So if we have other pool, we'll go here.
But honestly, folks, we are thinking
about relocating to Walnut Creek as well,
just to be closer, because it's our life for now.
And we have a second daughter who will be probably
in Walnut Creek as well.
She is Mollie, I'm watching this one.
Yeah, thank you so much.
And we really appreciate the support of Walnut Creek
Archives Project.
Thank you.
Well, thank you all very much.
That's all the speakers we have.
hearts for or have interested in speaking we have one more you can just
speak and then fill it out after okay there you go my name is Roger Smith and
I'm a resident of Walnut Creek I'm a master swimmer and a master water polo
player and like many of the folks here today I would encourage you to go back
and rethink this project you've had several studies prior to all of you
being here that say the facility was too small you need to expand and I believe I
understand there's possibility that that to analysis there was another one
possibly in 2015 that told the city the planners the same thing you had an
underutilized undersized facility based upon the needs and the amount of people
participating either in recreation or in competitive and you're certainly missing
out on good governance as a whole body, the city council, and possibly this group by not
listening to your stakeholders. This design is contrary to what your stakeholders have
asked you to do and what they need. Your designer has worked mainly on the direction, I believe,
of staff or city council and not the stakeholders in the big picture. Yes, we're at 50 meters,
But you also know that that's not sufficient.
It's a little bit too shallow in most of the pool if you want it to be a competitive thing.
My grandson is a rec swimmer here in town and he also, we just came back from his first
water polo tournament down in Irvine with the 680 water polo club.
He's a nine year old kid.
We have to squeeze into Las Lomas, they have to squeeze into this pool, they have to squeeze
and that pool. If you have a facility that can meet the needs of all of these folks and
all of these organizations, you can have great competition, great revenue. Walnut Creek can
be what it maybe used to be where people really want to come here for good things and not
bad things. Thank you.
Thank you. I'm coming here to, my name is Thomas Swartz. I'm a resident of Lafayette
and I come here as an occasional lab summer,
I swim here at Campa Londo Pool.
I swim in high school by water polo,
and since then I've been a lab summer.
I had a bunch of detailed questions,
but one just came to mind now, which is the only one.
I'm going to ask, it's been really impressive
how much concern there was among the more
intentionally involved community here,
as far as the competition goes, and so on.
And it occurred to me just now just a few minutes ago.
To ask the question of how the community standard serves the pool
and whether what is the connection between them in terms of function.
And would it make sense to consider them in isolation.
For example if you have a big me with a thousand people or more more coming here.
Does community standard also serve that event.
Are there meals and so on served in the arts community center in the kitchen zone, are they involved in that process that event over a weekend say, and if they were to be able to be said be considered separately, maybe that will be would allow for considering taking some of that space now devoted
to the community center and devote it instead to the pool and consider putting the community
center somewhere and differently entirely. Right now they're separate park pool and the
community center. Maybe they could be that way again. Okay it looks like public comment
is done. Thank you all very much. Really. Okay this is the last call for so we can't
keep having. Hi there. My name is Tammy McGregor. I'm a two time Olympian and I
moved here from Florida to join the world famous Walnut Creek Aquanauts. The
city of Walnut Creek is famous all over the world in artistic swimming. People
know about it whether they came here for a competition or they came here for a
training camp or they just know us on the world stage. So obviously our
aquatics facilities are very important to us over our history. We've invested in
thousands of young women and will continue to and now we're starting to
also invest in young men. They're becoming part of our sport. So looking at
the needs of our facilities, I think there are some specific things that we're looking
for and one of those ideas is stretching the big pool to 52 meters, requesting six lanes
of deep water in the rec pool and for us specifically, we would really like to be able to support
our annual swim show which I think is also quite famous in this community and touches
Lots of families and young people's lives.
So thank you for your efforts.
Hello, my name is Emma Moore
and I am a resident of Walnut Creek
and I've been swimming with the Walnut Creek Aquamats
for 10 years now.
And Heather Farms has basically become my second home.
And we host every single practice here,
many camps and many shows
that not only our family and friends enjoy,
but the city enjoys as well.
And that I support the Walnut Creek Aquatic Foundation's
proposed design, but we need bigger pool space
and a deeper pool so we can accommodate
for all the teams swimming there,
not just the aqua nets, but the aqua bears and master programs.
So please support the WCAF proposal.
We really need a new aquatic center at Heather Farms
that will continue to support all of our athletes
and the whole community.
Thank you.
Okay, now the public comments are closed.
Thank you all very much.
Oh, seriously?
Okay, all right, one more.
Okay, watch this how fast this is.
Okay, so I might be wearing a purple Aquanet sweater.
My name is Alvin Shen.
I'm a dad of two, hopefully two very soon,
Aquanaut swimmers as well.
But this is not an Aquanaut statement.
This is not an Aquabare statement.
This is not a master statement or a water polo statement.
But it's actually really nice that I actually ironically
got to be the last one to speak.
But I think the takeaway that we can have from tonight
is if we look at all the stakeholders,
if we look at the wonderful design that was proposed,
if we look at all the comments, the stats, the requests,
the modifications, and all the different things,
What can we take away from tonight's topic, right?
I think it's that we have to walk away and say,
well, why are so many of the people that are so involved
and so invested literally in their time and energy
and effort coming up tonight on a Monday night
at eight something tonight asking to really deeply think,
and we talk about deep water.
I think it's a request to dive deeper
for the leadership team making decisions.
Go deeper, ask yourself the question,
Why are so many people standing in opposition
of what's presently proposed?
Are there questions about why is it
that we're asking to be reconsidered,
all the different things that we've suggested?
So I think it's just look in the mirror
and ask ourselves what adjustments,
what changes can be made?
There's something here tonight
that's percolating to the surface.
Is there things that we can make
that will make all parties from all sides
much happier with what we're gonna do.
If we're gonna do it, do it right.
We only have once in every 75 to 100 years to build this.
Let's make sure that everybody walks away
really believing in what we're gonna do.
And so I think that that's the question we have is
why is it sounding like this?
I believe that you guys will make the right decision
and do the right thing, so thank you guys.
Okay, thank you again for all of your comments.
We're gonna take a break of about 10 minutes
when we come back the Commission will have an opportunity for comments on
everything we've heard tonight so ten minutes okay this is the time when we'll
hear from the Commission comments additional questions of staff or
comments on what we've heard and let's go okay so a lot to talk about thank you
very much. I'm obviously excited about the opportunity for this project. I was on a task
force in 2001 that we came to, was trying to raise money for this, and it ended up being
Measure O. That was 2011. So here we are, many years later. So a couple of comments.
Number one, first off, the Design Review Commission two weeks ago met and there are four architects
and one non-architect.
I'd recommend watching the last 20, 30 minutes of that.
They had some very interesting conclusions the architects did on the design, mostly around
the building as it relates to the pool, which I thought was enlightening.
We do have, as a suggestion, and you guys may have already picked up on this, but in
regards to the recreational pool, we have rec swim clubs.
We're incredibly lucky to have rec swim clubs in Walnut Creek, right?
We have Indian Valley, Walnut Heights, Red Gear Meadows, Red Gear Estates, look.
These are pools that are open late spring, summer, early fall for rec swimmers.
I don't see a huge need for the beach area
and for that is only going to be used for a few months a year
when there's such a huge demand for space.
If this was a pool, I'm just.
We're going to really ask that people not applaud or boo
or do any of those kind of things.
We appreciate it that we understand everyone's passionate,
but it just makes the meaning run much smoother without that.
So part of the 2011 task force, we
did identify a number of recommendations to the city and it was public and private partnerships.
This one seems like a no brainer. My neighborhood is Indian Valley. I think some of you are
also in neighborhoods with pools. A lot of the newer families coming in, my wife's in
elementary school at Park Mead, go Panthers. And a lot of the newer families are coming
in living in, live in high density housing. They don't live in the neighborhoods where
they know, where there are rec, where they know there are rec pools that they can join
for a very nominal summer fee,
and be a part of these programs that have shallow water.
They have short diving boards.
They have lessons, water pool,
or swim lessons and lifeguards.
They don't know about these things.
It needs to be a better,
I think that seemed like a no-brainer to me.
I'm sure you guys have some comments on that as well.
And maybe this has been explored before,
but I've tried to pay attention to all the things
in the process along the way,
and I haven't seen that addressed.
If it has, please let me know.
The water polo folks, you're not a part
of the aquatics foundation.
You're kind of on an island.
I know you haven't been a part,
a user of the Heather Farm Facility,
but if you're interested in becoming,
having a, if you're, these are taxpayer dollars
we're talking about using.
And that is a different standard than,
that's a higher standard for a lot of us
in terms of how we spend money.
But folks like us and the city council in particular,
we don't know water polo.
We don't know what the opportunities are there.
You need to come up with some sort of business plan,
give us a cost benefit analysis
as to how you can be successful
and why we should be using taxpayer dollars
to invest in a program that allows you to thrive
and your folks to contribute to the city
and all the businesses around us.
Because we just aren't familiar with water polo.
And I understand it's a great sport and growing sport.
And I'm a Los Lomas grad and a new lot of water polo guys,
many of whom had college scholarships.
We have other pools in the area that are rec swimming.
We have raging waters in Concord.
If somebody wants a lazy pool, you can go five miles that way
and find the lazy pool and float around there.
It doesn't have to just be wall in the creek city limits.
Yeah, this is a, you know, a 50 to 75 year deal.
So we should really be looking at, you know,
the population in 1970 was,
what was the population of Walnut Creek in 1970?
39,000 people in 1970.
And today it is 80,000, something like that, 85,
maybe 100 if you take the other areas.
I won't take any more of your time,
but I think that about covers my major points.
Thank you very much.
First I have a couple questions of Dennis.
One is if we were to have a pool that would be along the lines recommended by the aquatics
foundation. How does that square with the code, what we would have to follow? Would
it mean that there would be no recreation capabilities for that pool?
So if we did a 50 meter all deep pool, California code allows it in that it says public pools
have to be no deeper than three six with an exception and the exception is a pool designed
for a single specific purpose. That's the wording of the code. I spoke with the county
environmental health about this and said there there is a contingency in the community that
would like it all deep. So if we made this a special all purpose deep pool in Walnut
Creek at Heather Farm what would you require? And they told us that they would require number
one that that pool be fence and independent of the rest of the aquatic
center that has to be not less than a five foot tall fence to meet code they
also said that they would limit program use to that pool to only competitive
since it's a quote deep water competitive pool they would only they
would limit the uses of the pool to that and they would require the city to sign
a letter and and a operating procedure on how they would operate to ensure it
complies with that as part of it.
Now, there are ways we can get into pools where we stretch the pools to get to the 3-6,
for example.
We do Ls and foot appendages so that we can get to that 3-6 in places where the space
allows us to do that.
I just did off the cuff a list of 20 50-meter pools that we've designed here in the Bay
area, from Daugherty Valley High School to the San Ramon Olympic Pool, the City of Pleasanton,
City of Livermore, Burlingame, Sacred Heart, St. Francis, Knappert, Concord, bring down
this entire list.
And of these 20 pools that I went down the list, we have two that are special purpose.
One is Camp Olinda that we've talked about, over for Aquilana's Unified School District,
and the other is College of Marin.
So what we don't have is any city public pools that were done as a, quote, special purpose.
So it certainly can be done.
There's going to be limitations, and we have to look at it and say, is that acceptable
to the community, to the city, to everybody that we're going to build this and then limit
who could use it.
Okay.
My second question is similar, but it's relative to the recreational pool.
So what I'm imagining is something like a slightly fewer lane copy of Larky instead
of what we currently have on the plan.
But it also has more like the features that are in the plan.
Is that, does that allow, is that allowed under current code?
Sure.
Again, as long as we have that shallow end of the pool, we have other things about code
that we would make sure it complies, but what you've described, that would be quite easy
to do something that would comply with code.
Okay.
Thanks.
Sure.
So with that in mind, I just wanted to say that I support alterations to the recreational
pool to allow deep water and an adequate size that would allow for artistic swim competition
with appropriate sized deck space for the use for spectators significant you know significantly
close to what we currently have at least when the fall program is performed for the Aquanauts.
It may be, it may already be there but if you start to make the pool a little bit bigger
I don't know what the deck would be.
I don't support changing the planned 50 meter pool with the exception of a further evaluation
of the use of a bulkhead.
I see a gentleman in the back room use the term generational decision and it really
is right in our lifetime this is it I know many of you long-term residents
along the creek have seen the Clark Swim Center and the development of it and all
these kind of iterations of it and I know when I joined the Commission back
back in 2017 in my naivety at that time.
Design plans were there and there was talk about
building a new pool at Clark Swim Center
and the surrounding structures and then it kind of died
on the vine at that time and didn't move forward.
Then after that time, as a representative
of the proposed commission, we had the Yours Park,
at Your Park, Your Future, our mandate was a little broader
than just the pool.
It was looking at Walnut Creek infrastructure
for Civic Park, Shadelands, and Clark Swim Center,
Heather Farm Community Center, et cetera.
And so when we met and we had all the consultants come in
and programmatic discussions were had
in addition to facilities, at that time,
and we thought the optics wouldn't look good,
for all the infrastructure repair we wanted,
for all these different facilities,
is going to be over $100 million for that.
And so, of course, we knew that would probably die on the vine.
And it's now taken.
But even though at that time, we recognize
that in terms of priority number one,
the Clark Swim Center was absolute priority, given
the age, given the likelihood of some catastrophic failure
with plumbing and everything else.
And so now it's evolved into this idea of more than that,
as proposition and funding for building a new community center.
So we are, as there's had a discussion earlier, we are close.
We are in the precipice of actually having something great.
And as the gentleman said, in terms of generational decision,
we do want to get it right.
Now we do have to factor in that $77 million, right?
You have to keep in mind, I'm sure the council is thinking that, right?
So they're kind of focused here.
And so there's going to have to be some compromise, right?
There will have to be compromise.
The Aquatic Foundation has done a great job
presenting everything on their wish list, right?
And they're all reasonable in terms of doing that.
But there's gonna have to be compromise.
So whether it's the diving boards,
or part of the deck space, or bleachers,
keep that in mind that when something is finally decided,
that there will have to be some kind of compromise.
But I don't think there needs to be compromise
on such as the deep water for both pools.
I think that's an integral part of, again,
introducing water polo.
It's huge for the aqua nuts to have deep water and lots of it
so they can do all the things they want to do.
So I think that's very important.
Something I learned tonight that was kind of interesting,
competition versus recreation.
Interesting when I had discussions years ago with folks
in the Aquatics Foundation and even members of council,
it never came up.
There was an idea that we wanted to have competition
for the pool, but the idea that it was going to be at a certain level was a relatively
newer concept, at least for some of us who were not part of it, but that being said,
I like the idea that, okay, you could have what would be considered a recreational pool,
but with certain adjustments and things that it could meet the competition and still satisfy
the requirements of the, you know, shallower end and all that.
So it sounds like there could be some compromise there.
And of course Measure O came in,
that wasn't on the radar either.
So that has been a gift for us.
But again, as a taxpayer and a property owner
in Walnut Creek and I spend lots of money in the city,
I do also, again, I wanna be physically responsible
with those funds and so will Walnut Creek residents as well.
So, so I think we can, I think in some we can, we were, you're all going to get many
of these things.
There will have to be some kind of compromise.
But we're, again, very close to this all coming to fruition and seeing it being realized by
2027.
Hopefully.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner Meyer.
Before I give my comments, I did have a question about the community center.
So, in reference to the kitchen, that's only available for rental space and events, right?
It's not something that's to service meats like a snack shack, like some people discussed.
It's not in a place that would make it immediately accessible during meats.
That's not what it was designed for, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any planned
infrastructure to support more temporary kinds of food facilities at the deck space.
Not the commercial kitchen, though.
That's correct.
Thank you.
As a youth member myself, I think
it's very, very important to support
as many recreational activities as possible,
whether that be speed swimming, artistic swimming, diving,
water polo, and just allowing kids a place
to have their summer camps.
And with the facility as it is, I
don't see the space for that, especially
with the level of competition that we
want to see in Walnut Creek.
but we do have a finite amount of resources.
Even with Measure O,
which is largely the funding source of this program,
I've heard tons and tons and tons of pushback on that.
And that was what a half cent increase in sales tax.
We simply don't have the funding to do more.
And so I don't have the numbers in front of me.
I don't know how much it would cost
to make the pool significantly deeper.
I do support the expanded 52 meter pool with bulkheads,
I do want to see the rec pool much deeper to allow like, for example, the aqueducts
or divers to have an alternative space to practice when the whole pool, the whole 52
meter pool or excuse me, 50 meter pool is being booked out for competitions.
I don't know if that means shrinking the wave channel or modifying the play structure.
I believe the Pleasant Hill Swim and Aquatic Center.
It doesn't have it as a beach type of system.
It just has the play structure on concrete.
Still preserves the play structure
and the sprinkler heads and whatnot.
It can absolutely have the nature theme,
but perhaps that could be an option.
And then maybe it could be sequestered
in a different corner,
which would also allow more deck space.
And yeah, I see a huge concern with the number of bleachers.
Over the summer, I visited a public pool in Spain,
which was not even an Olympic sized pool,
but it had a huge bleacher section about three stories tall.
Yeah, and that was a public pool.
And we have a bigger pool than they had at that facility,
and we don't have nearly as much bleacher space.
So I think we need more of that, and it does need to be permanent.
But again, we are working within a finite amount of space.
We want to preserve the lawn.
I don't know if that means getting rid of more of the lawn
space and adding more deck.
Maybe that means adding multi-tier pavilion type
areas to put more overflow for people so that we can utilize the same floor
space but have more places to put people but I do think it needs to be
expanded somewhat and obviously within the existing budget. Thank you.
Commissioner Mariano. Thank you. Dennis I have a quick question and you get up he
gets up he gets down. Yeah. That there's there's been some suggestions I just want
make sure that let's say just, you know, wet the slate clean,
you deepen the 50 meter pool and you deepen the rec pool. What
happens to swim lessons or people who need help standing up,
you know, in, in, quote, shallow water, does that go away? Or
where are we there?
So that's a great question. I mean, the issue becomes, if we
look at the proposals and say deep in the 50 meter pool, we
take the 50 feet of shallow water that was currently shown in that 50 meter pool and
eliminate that? Or do we turn around and say we're going to deepen the pool but we need
to maintain that 50 feet for swim lessons and stuff? That's I think a real fundamental
question that we have to ask ourselves when we take a look at this. So to answer your
question directly, I mean if we start eliminating the shallow water, we're going to eliminate
our ability to have as many swim lessons.
And swim lessons aren't any different than the swim teams,
the groups that use this,
and that again, oftentimes we're limited
to the amount of water space and the instructors
that we can have in a program in terms of whom we can,
who we can serve in terms of doing all of this.
One of the things I was gonna point out
is as far as clarification,
the existing Clark Swim Center right now
has 3,150 square feet of deep water.
And what we showed you tonight as the schematic design,
we were 8,550 square feet of deep water.
So one of the things I think that's confusing
is that I stand here and say, we've got more water,
we've got more deck, we've got more deep water,
and then you've got a bunch of people standing here
saying we're getting less and less and less.
What it really comes down to is coming in saying
that having this pool that's dedicated to deep water
that you have now and saying that gets moved
into the 50 and now we're sharing it.
And so that sharing it becomes the real challenge
that we have.
And so to your question now, when we come in and say,
now we're going to try to make that all deep,
we're going to take the rec pool that we were trying
to serve the community with and make that deep.
Because so the proposal was go to 10 lanes,
but make six of the 10 deep.
So what currently was going to be six lanes
of shallow water becomes three.
No, three.
It's three plus a transition to get from shallow to deep
in terms of what you have.
So we're gonna go to three lanes there
and what do we do with the shallow water?
Do we eliminate it?
Do we reduce it in a 50 meter pool?
And for all the lower level swim classes,
that's all shallow water.
Right and I guess that's my concern
is deep in the pool here, deep in the pool there
and all of a sudden there's no place to stand.
Correct.
Right, right.
Okay, that was my question.
Unless you can hold your breath for a long time.
Which I can't.
or can I? Thanks I'll make my comment short then I I want to applaud
everybody for coming out and I think it's really important that we the city
and the City Council and staff works to come to an agreement to make the
aquatics community happy because it's such a integral part of our community
has been for like I said 50 54 years or and longer what I would like to suggest
is that you know I don't I don't pretend to know enough to say do this do that I
would like to say that I would hope that we could go back to the city council at
least give them some options with a dollar amount on it in terms of this is
what it's going to be to deepen the 50 meter pool this is what it would be to
expand it two meters with a bulkhead because to Commissioner Kearsley's point
You know, they're already, they're going to look and say,
it's 77 million and growing right now.
And we have all these other wish lists
of what the community wants us to do.
Well, what is this going to cost and what is the benefit?
And I think this is not for me to figure out,
and I'm sure this is difficult in any regard,
but if we do deepen the 50 meter pool
and make it the two meters,
and then therefore are able to bring in more competitions.
What is the dollar amount that we can expect
to return on that?
And there's a couple of people that bandied
some numbers together, but I don't know how,
if anybody can say what that is.
But I guess my point is that this is all fine and good,
but without some hard numbers, they're going to have,
I think, a difficult time seeing no problem
that makes sense right off the bat,
especially if we're moving forward with the design
within the next couple months.
Just in that regard, the things that I think
that would be important to kick upstairs
is the deepening of the 50-meter pool
to bring in the competitions.
That made sense to me.
The bulkhead expanding the 50 to 52.
I worry about our younger swimmers,
are elderly swimmers that need a shallow area,
in terms of if we were to deepen everything,
then we would be shortchanging those,
because a big part of the concepts
that we've heard tonight is about balance.
So I wanna make sure we can do that as well.
And then, yeah, that's all I had.
Thank you very much for coming.
Okay, echo some of the thoughts that others
have already said, and I'll try to be quick,
but I really think we do need to reconsider the deepening
and trying to accommodate the year round users
of the pool facilities.
One idea I had, which I don't think has been explored is
in the recreational pool,
there's the sort of really shallow 18 inch beach part
and then the current channel.
And then there's a more traditional five foot deep
for lap swimming or water aerobics, whatever.
And when I first saw this back when they first came up
with these ideas, I really questioned
whether the city needs to provide that really shallow
beach facility with the current area and stuff like that and maybe instead have that
be the lap swimming, five foot and three foot, you know, what I mean, it would obviously
you'd have to do some of it, which would then free up the other in that drawing the back
half of that, which is currently the five foot lap area, maybe that could then be the
more deeper aquana area or something like that.
You know, there are a lot of other facilities,
and if at Heather Farms, we wanted a kids splash area,
I've seen them that aren't part of a cool complex.
They're just like a kind of concrete, ponded-like area,
or maybe it's that other kind of material.
But water just comes up.
I think San Ramon has one, right?
I mean, they're fun, and kids love them.
And you don't have to be part of the pool
to have fun in a water facility.
And it seems like Heather Farms would have space somewhere
for something like that.
And then you wouldn't have to have gone to the pool
to take advantage of that.
You could just be at the park
and take advantage of that on a hot day.
Anyway, so I think there's some other kinds of things
we could look at to do that.
But I do think we do have to keep in mind costs.
I mean, it is already a pretty expensive project.
And so as others have said, I'll echo that,
that anything we do, we do need to think about that.
And I know that obviously in the long run,
things might be an economic advantage,
but we still have to come up with payment
for the capital costs.
So that's a balance.
So I just think we need to spend a little more time
thinking this through.
And I did sort of like the idea of the bulkhead.
I think that pool would be more usable
with a bulkhead, the 50 meter.
So I would also think we should look more in depth
at that and the cost and what it would take to do that,
which I assume means expanding it to the 52.
So those are my comments.
Did anyone have anything else?
Okay, well thank you very much.
We will move on to, I mean, you can leave if your way.
We have one more agenda item, a couple more.
So the pros, commissioner reports.
Let's just give them like five minutes to leave.
Can we give everybody a minute to clear?
What you do?
How do you know that's your hat?
So if you could quickly leave the chamber so we can continue our business.
I think we can go. The next item on the agenda is the pros
commissioners reports and I'm actually going to go first. As you know this is
Robert Kursley's last meeting with us and he's been on the Commission for eight
years and as you could tell you know you've got long history with the your
parks your future and you know in our meetings like even up a you know mayor's
breakfast and stuff you always very passionate about that so I'm kind of
happy we're at a good spot in it seems like and hopefully you're around to sort
of help see it through to the end even though you won't be on the commission
anymore and we have some parting gifts for you so I don't know Mike you may want
Did he leave?
Thank you.
Okay.
And then, can you take this out for me?
Oh, sure.
Can you just take it out of there?
You don't want blood.
You don't want blood.
I'm sorry.
Blood, sweat, and tears.
So this is a beautiful picture of some open space and a little plaque that says, you know,
thank you for, thank you for your service.
Right now we're after the meeting.
Okay so if any of you have anecdotes you'd like to share your your
experiences with Robert that'd be wonderful or if you have any other
reports of course this is your time on the agenda so I didn't prepare any
material Robert so I could add live but I won't but I'll just say thank you very
much for your service you're a great great pros member and you will be missed.
So I have noticed over the years that we've served together that nary a an
agenda item comes up that you don't have a well I go actually out on that trail
or or I go I do that or my kids do that or whatever so that tells me that you
will still have things to say when you're no longer on the Commission so we
welcome you back at the other podium there for the public
comments. Thanks for eight years.
I just want to say thank you all so much.
I want to start thanking my family my my wife Marla my
daughter Haley who was an aqua nut and my son Nathaniel
who played soccer and baseball and all the things.
And at times we I tried to be unbiased and impartial
And that often conflicted with my wife and my daughter
and sometimes my son in terms of their opinions.
So, but I did try to keep very balanced
and really look at all sides of these things
and not influence even some of the personal things
whereby we are all involved in these programs
and activities in the city.
I wanna thank of course city council,
my fellow commissioners.
I wanna take, thank Heather, Kevin, Mike, Orlando,
Jim Carlson, Karen, Janine, and Matt Bollinger
who makes us all look good for these meetings.
And what's interesting about being here eight years
is you think, well, gosh, I hardly got anything done
or there was so much more to do.
And I don't take credit for this,
but I give staff a lot of credit
for things like the expansion of the community gardens
at Heather Farm was when I was the new commissioner.
The renovated Larky Swim Center, that was a big one.
Expansion of Pickle Bowl at Rudgear Park
and also at the Walnut Creek Tennis Center.
And as we know, that's exploded and has its own challenges.
And last but not least, your parks, your future.
again as I mentioned tonight it started in one way and looked a lot of good work done but now
it's you know certainly the focus is on pools and all that and so that's very exciting to see.
I also want to you know always give a shout out to Walnut Creek Open Space Foundation.
I'm very impressed by the work they do. It's you know they're all volunteers like we are on the
the commissions, and they do a lot of work and great stuff.
It's been interesting working with pickleball supporters
and tennis, mountain bikers, equestrians, hikers,
residents living near the parks and open space,
and of course, the Aquatic Foundation.
But it's been a real pleasure.
And you all will continue on and do lots of great work.
So thank you.
have one final thing to say which is I was a little reluctant you know to when
I was brand new really to become the vice chair but it was really a pleasure
and I learned a lot from you know and like I said we had other duties like the
breakfast and stuff like that and you know and I just picked up a lot because
you had such history and anyway it made me more confident when I sat down at this
So yeah, they're appreciated and yeah, I hope we do see you I am the new
Walnut Creek open space foundation
liaison for the pros and
Big year they're 50 is getting ready for their 50th anniversary celebration
and there was
Carlina's been such a great addition to the pros Commission that I recommended that they also add a youth
person to their foundation board and so we are going to work on that and also
try to get Northgate and Los Alamos involved and figure out you know they
meet Fridays at 10 a.m. so it's hard for the for a youth person in high school to
show up but it is something that we're gonna work on see how we can't make one
meeting a quarter in the evening or something like that. Okay any other
Commissioner reports? Okay. Staff reports? So congratulations after eight years.
Thanks for serving with us. I just wanted to point out that that picture there
Bramhall Pond which is in Shell Ridge is named after Audrey Bramhall who was one
of the leaders in fighting for the R8 bond that secured the open space and so
with her big lift it's always great. We gave the same photo to Jodi because
with your guys lift and the amount of effort that you put into supporting the
community we wanted to recognize you with her with her her pawn so yeah thank
you I'll just add I don't have a report per se but I just wanted to add my
thank you to Robert you said it yourself you touched a lot of the things that
we've worked on in these last eight years you've been involved in a lot of
the subcommittees and and processes that we went through in your parts your
future with obviously a very big lift and so I want to thank you for that thank
you for your involvement to Commissioner Oler's response you had
involvement you touched a lot of the things that we do here in pros and so it
was really good input that you always provided you always very thoughtful we
appreciated that you always prepped staff hey I'm gonna ask this or you know
had a pre-meeting with us so we really appreciate your eight years and we're
going to miss you, but as Art said, you can come and be on the other side of the.
So thank you again.
Really do appreciate it.
Okay.
This concludes the February five, 2024 pros commission meeting.
And we are adjourned to the April one scheduled meeting.
Okay.
And pitcher time.