Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a two-part series about the potential of bringing back outdoor community swimming pools. Last week’s story focused on Sterling’s Lawrence Park Pool. Today, we are featuring Dixon’s Memorial Pool.

DIXON – If you ask Dixon Park District Executive Director Duane Long, he will tell you that he would love to see Dixon’s Memorial Pool return to its former glory. It just might take a miracle or two.

Why it closed

Dixon’s Memorial Pool opened in 1950 and was dedicated by President Ronald Reagan in memory of war veterans. The pool closed in 2000 after extensive repair costs. Long said that in 2001, the park district hired Burbach Aquatics to evaluate those repair costs. Their answer: $2 million.

“The thing with public pools is they just lose money,” Long said. “You know that going in because you’re providing a service. It’s just, how much money can you lose to provide that service and provide services to all the rest of your park district? We just don’t have the room in our budget to operate a swimming pool that loses money every year.”

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Memorial Pool in Dixon closed in 2000. Estimates to bring the pool back to its former glory range between $12 million and $15 million. (Alex T. Paschal)

Long said the park district operates on an annual budget of $1.4 million. That money has to cover staff salaries as well as maintenance and upkeep of the park district’s multiple parks, playgrounds and walking trails while saving for future projects and unforeseen repair costs, such as those that befell Memorial Pool. Sterling’s Lawrence Park Pool faced a similar situation before closing for good in 2010.

The first miracle

“I just don’t see a way of bringing back that pool unless somebody walked in with millions of dollars,” Long said.

That’s because last year, Long said, the park district had Burbach Aquatics perform a new cost projection to restore the facility based on their original estimate and, factoring in today’s prices and inflation, their answer was a staggering $12 million to $16 million.

The second miracle

“Even if someone walked in with the money, we couldn’t afford the operating expenses on our budget,” Long said. “On top of someone gifting us the seed money, we would need them to regularly cover those operational costs. At least, if we don’t want to ask taxpayers for more money.”

That request has failed in the past. In 2007, voters rejected an advisory ballot measure aimed at assessing public support for increasing property taxes to fund the repair and maintenance of the pool with a vote of 931-644. At that time, it was projected to cost $2 million to $5 million to restore the pool and $100,000 annually to operate. A similar referendum to build a new pool had failed in 2002.

Fighting for their pool

Despite voter opposition, there have been several community-led efforts to save Memorial Pool.

In 2011, local residents banded together through Facebook to gather publicity and signatures in support of saving the pool, but without any financial support, the effort failed. A few years later, another group came along with the idea to repurpose the pool. Long said the park district spent between $5,000 and $6,000 to help start the GenNex community youth center in the facility’s bottom half.

“The ultimate goal of GenNex was to make the upper part of the pool a skate park,” Long said. “We were on board but came to find out that renovating the pool and making it safe for a skate park would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Not only did we not have the money, we discovered it would be cheaper to build a new skate park somewhere else.”

Moving on

Since then, the park district has pursued other options, such as the opening of its Water Wonderland and Vaile Park splash pads a few years ago.

“People keep asking why we don’t open an indoor aquatic center,” Long said. “Between building it and paying for year-round operational costs, not to mention saving for inevitable repairs, that would cost even more money than restoring Memorial Pool. I would love to give this community the outdoor aquatic center they deserve, but it’s just not financially feasible. Hopefully that can change one day.”