While the official first day of summer is not for a couple of weeks, for most, Memorial Day marked the start of summer fun, and nothing says summer fun quite like swimming.
For people in Bellefonte, though, the heat is going to be hard to beat this summer as Kepler Pool will be closed for the second consecutive season because of long-needed renovations.
The Nittany Valley Joint Recreation Authority is working to make the pool the great community resource that it once was. It hopes to bring the pool back and better than ever in 2023, but it is going to need some community support.
LONGTIME COMMUNITY GATHERING PLACE
NVJRA board member and long-time Bellefonte resident Rich Fornicola said he can remember a time more than 50 years ago when the town rallied around efforts to bring a community pool to the Victorian town. In response, fundraisers were held and people got behind the project.
“The idea was to provide a safe place in the Bellefonte community for families to enjoy clean, safe summer swimming,” said Fornicola.
Since it opened in Governors Park in 1971, the pool has long been a community gathering place for the Bellefonte area. Fornicola said for years on hot summer days, families would gather on the pool deck making memories. The YMCA Bellefonte Sting Rays swim team used the pool for summer practices and meets and many area youth held summer jobs as lifeguards. The pool would stay open in the evenings and provide a safe place for teens to gather during the summer months.
“There were a lot of pool parties,” said Fornicola. “People would have birthday parties, because of all the lights under the pool there.”
He said those glory days are long gone.
Through the years, Fornicola said, there have not been many upgrades made to the pool, and in 2020, it closed due to mechanical issues that were too pricey to fix. All the years of patchwork repairs finally caught up to the aging structure.
Even before operations at the main pool were suspended, the children’s wading pool was closed due to disrepair. Fornicola said this is one of the examples of how the pool needs upgrades to make it the community asset it could be.
“I think bringing back the children’s pool and adding some attractions to (be) get younger people to want to come out are going to vital in the future of sustaining memberships to the pool,” said Fornicola.
A BIG PLAN
NVJRA is a collaborative effort by four area municipalities — Bellefonte Borough, Benner Township, Spring Township and Walker Township— and owns the pool. Since its inception, NVJRA has actively worked to apply for grants and gain local support to improve the pool.
Pre-COVID, it was awarded a $300,000 state grant to go toward improvements. Added municipal support brought the total budget to $667,000, which NVJRA hoped would get things rolling.
It hired a design firm to draw up plans to refurbish the pool and the children’s pool and conduct mechanical upgrades.
Then COVID happened.
After several delays, the DCNR approved the plans in September and when the project was sent out for bid, cost estimates came back at around $1.8 million — well above what the group anticipated.
“We could have just thrown in the towel, but we are committed to this project,” said NVJRA board chair Chris Haak.
The group had to assess what was a realistic way to move forward. After looking at the estimates and including the remodeling of the bathhouse, it decided that about $2.9 million was going to be needed for construction and engineering.
An outside consulting firm came in and identified $1.5 million in state grants that could be applied for for the project. Back in April, the Centre County commissioners threw their support behind those grant applications.
“I don’t know that a lot of people realize that the Kepler Pool was constructed in about 1970. It’s been a staple of the Bellefonte community for 50-some years,” Commissioner Steven Dershem said at the time. “It really does need a lot of work. The standard that it was built to and the standards that are prevalent today are a galaxy apart. They really do need a lot of help and this is part of it. But, it’s really going to take a community effort to bring the project to fruition. It’s going to need the support of local government and it’s going to need the support of citizens and folks that are interested in the recreation of our kids. It is really the only pool available in a multi-township, borough area. It’s an incredibly important project. I would hope that the community gets behind it in so many different ways.”
With these grants in place, along with other fundraising efforts, the hope is to start construction on upgrades in the spring and have the pool open for part of the summer season in 2023.
The group is working on fundraising with the YMCA of Centre County, which manages the pool through the Neighborhood Assistance Program, with the hopes of raising $335,000.
A second fundraising campaign will kick off later this year through Nittany Valley Recreation Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. The second fundraising campaign will have the goal of raising an additional $300,000 through private donors.
People can contact [email protected] with questions about potential donations or regarding possible volunteering opportunities.
