Santa Clara-It has spent more than a year since the city closed George F. Haines International Swim Center on Safety Conns, displacing local swimmers and divers while the city dealt with what to do with long-term facilities. Now, the city is embarking on a large company to restore the Historical Aquatic Center and extend its useful life for another 30 years.
The unanimous decision of the City Council of Santa Clara de Rehabilitation of the Center has been decades in the fact that many who have used the facilities since they opened in 1967 and recognized the fundamental role they have played on the international swimming stage.
“I think today has a very good day to recognize the history and contributions of the past,” said Councilman Kevin Park at this week’s meeting by approving the measure.
The swimming center, which was renamed in 2000 after the late Olympic swimming coach of the United States and founder of Santa Clara Swim Club, George F. Haines, served as a training field for some of the best Olympic swimmers of the twentieth century. Twenty -three world records have been established there, more recently by a 17 -year Michael Phelps in 2003.
The installation has also been the home of the Santa Clara Artistic Swimming Club, previously known as Aquamoids, whose last chief coach, Chris Carver, also trained several Olympic artistic swimming teams at the swimming center.
But the three swimming pools, a 17 -foot diving well, a 50 -meter competition pool and a less deep pool largely used by a margin learning program, along with the locker room and other structures began to show signs of wear years. He reached a break point in January 2024 after an inspection of the installation found critical security problems that forced the city to close the swimming center indefinitely.
Five months later, the Council decided to follow a temporary solution of $ 1.8 million. They chose to replicate and roopen two of the three swimming pools, install new exterior fences and add showers and portable bathrooms while looking for a long -term plan.
However, the diving well would remain closed because the structural damage of that pool and the diving tower was too extensive. The city officials at that time also warned that there was no guarantee that the mechanical team of the pool, which had failed on multiple occasions in recent years, would continue working.
In January 2025, three weeks in the $ 1.8 million project, the contractors reached an obstacle when they found “damage not forced in the infrastructure of gutters and pointer of the pool,” according to a city report. The discovery led to city officials to reinvent the project and expand the scope, which they could do largely due to the passage of the extent to which last November, an infrastructure bonus of $ 400 million that has funds allocated to its aquatic facilities.
At Tuesday, the Council decided to advance with the first of the two phases to renew the installation. Phase 1 will include replacing the pool cover, plumbing, gutters and boilers for the three swimming pools. The 50 -meter main pool will also be reconfigured to increase depth, so it meets international racing standards, and the diving tower will be replaced or renewed. City officials expect $ 10 million to cost and observed infrastructure projects such as this generally take 34 months, they thought that the timeline could be shortened up to one year.
The Council also approved an emergency statement for the first phase of the project that will cross a bit of bureaucracy, a mechanism that Mayor Lisa Gillmor said the city does not use in the adjustments.
“When I was walking on the enclosures for the measure, that is the first thing that the community said:” I will support it because a new swimming center, “Gillmor said.” That was the first thing that anyone wanted to talk about it, you realize how important it is for the community until it disappears. Cynythyty is the cyn.
The tasks of action of the Council on Tuesday night also recovered the approach of the chief coach of Santa Clara Swim Club, Kevin Zacher and Todd Spohn, the chief coach of Santa Clara During.
Zacher said that when the infrastructure bonus first passed last year, the club imagined a new installation that would better satisfy the need “in terms of international meetings and events” than the plan presented this week. But not having a place for the club to train, he said, it has been a “difficulties.”
“This is the fastest way to return to a stable place at the ISC. It has been to meet our needs for the last 50 years, it will meet our needs in the future,” said Zacher. “Windle we want something a little more? Of course. But I don’t think it prevents the possibility of potentially adding to installation in the future to be more susceptible to those things.”
The project also received the support of the US President of the USA. UU., Lee Michaud, who in a letter to the city declared, “repeats an extraordinary opportunity not to restore the legacy of a historical aquatic place but to provide a world class to the locality teams the locality levels.”
The swimming center is one of the two facilities in the Bay area that can organize community diving events, according to Spohn. The other is more than 70 miles away in rookie.
The second phase of the project is expected to be approved at a later date, include the construction of all new costumes, storage rooms and other administrative buildings, together with the restoration of the bleach canopy.
