(Guthrie Center) A ribbon cutting is set for Saturday (6/19) in Guthrie Center for the community’s new pool house.
The ribbon cutting will start at 11:00 a.m. There will be about a fifteen minute presentation from community leaders followed by an open house. “With the help of our partners at MSA, we are going to have an open house. So anyone who wants to come in and look at the poolhouse, locker rooms, concession stand area, it’ll just be open. We’ll have some light snacks and drinks that’ll be provided for people that want to come down and look as part of the open house.”
Parks and Recreation Board President Chris Bunde says the idea for the 3,000 square foot facility was born out of a park improvement plan about five years ago. “Part of that plan was to build new restrooms for the park. That actually morphed over time. We also needed to update our old poolhouse because we had built a new aquatic center, but had used the old poolhouse structure and had done some updates to that.”
The old poolhouse was aging while the rest of the aquatic center was fairly new. “We decided to combine the needs we had for public restrooms with the proposal for a new poolhouse so that’s how that came to fruition. A few years ago we worked with a consulting firm out of Ankeny, MSA Consulting, and they put together the plan that we ended up approving.”
From there they worked with the community and city council to put together an $800,000 bond issue which was passed in late 2019. Construction went as scheduled and the new poolhouse was ready for the season. “So it’s beautiful, it’s new, and we want to show it off. We are very proud of it.”
Day passes for the pool will be just $1 for that day to encourage people to not only attend the ribbon cutting, but to stick around and enjoy the facility.