Saying Arne Hanna is crowded, swimmers want YMCA to add this to Bellingham’s pool
The Whatcom Family YMCA is considering a request to add more swim lanes to the crowded Arne Hanna Aquatic Center, the head of the YMCA said.
As a result, the YMCA has temporarily paused its proposal to move from downtown Bellingham into a new building and take over the aquatic center, according to Bill Ziels, the CEO/executive director of the Whatcom Family YMCA.
Swimmers have appeared before the Bellingham City Council to say they feared the current plan — adding four, 25-yard lanes to the aquatic center’s lap pool, bringing the total number of swimming lanes to 12, and a family recreation pool — wouldn’t meet the community’s need for more aquatics space.
In fact, crowded conditions could worsen if the Y moves and shuts down its own pool, swimmers said.
“If we’re going to be build something, let’s build enough space,” said Marci Hardy, a board member of the group Let’s Pool Together, which has been working to bring more space for aquatics to Bellingham.
The city of Bellingham owns the Arne Hanna Aquatic Center, which opened in 1995.
City officials and Ziels agreed with swimmers’ concerns but said dealing with crowding wasn’t the original intent of the plan.
“One of the primary misunderstandings, it seems to me, is the idea that the Y is proposing to rectify the crowding at Arne Hannah Aquatic Center,” City Council member Michael Lilliquist said to The Bellingham Herald.
“The main purpose is to build a recreational center next to (the aquatic center), not to replace or rebuild the aquatic center. Part of the proposal is that the Y could take over management of the pool, but not necessarily ownership of the pool,” said Lilliquist, who facilitated a meeting of city officials, Ziels, the Bellingham School District, and swim groups and advocates concerned about the proposal.
Nevertheless, Ziels said this was a chance to pause and see if there was a solution, one that the whole community could get behind.
“There’s been positive conversations because we hear the concern. We hear that the aquatics community would rather not have a solution that maintains the aquatic space,” Ziels said, referring to the current proposal, which would keep the same amount of swimming space in Bellingham.
Proposal history
The city of Bellingham and the Y have been in discussions since 2018 about a new partnership to expand the aquatic center into a new community health and wellness center and headquarters for the YMCA as part of an estimated $25 million project.
No agreement has been signed between the two, and at least one public hearing would be required before that could happen.
The city and the YMCA have been looking at roughly 6 acres of city owned-land off Lakeway Drive.
That area is part of the Civic Athletic Complex. The city of Bellingham owns the aquatic center and the complex, which includes Civic Field, the Sportsplex and Joe Martin Stadium.
The aquatic center is near Interstate 5 and has the potential for expansion, additional parking and renovation of the existing facility, YMCA officials have said, adding the site was the best location to develop a modern recreational hub for its members and the broader community.
A new or renovated building would allow the YMCA to serve more people and to provide more programs, the nonprofit said in a previous Bellingham Herald story.
The YMCA would pay for construction, while the city’s contributions to the partnership are part of the negotiations.
If it moved, the YMCA would leave its four-story building at 1256 N. State St., which is 115 years old and requires significant upgrades that, if done, would require the building to be closed for about a year, according to Ziels.
The building houses a pool, built in the 1950s, that has four lanes that are each 20 yards long. There also is a small shallow pool.
The proposal could include the YMCA running the aquatic center on behalf of the city, which would continue to own the land and would enter into a long-term lease with the YMCA.
For its part, the city wants to reduce its annual subsidy of Arne Hanna, which costs about $1.7 million to staff, operate and maintain each year. Roughly $500,000 of that is covered annually by fees for programs and rental money from competitive swim teams.
The rest of the money comes out of the general fund, which pays for the daily operations of the city.
Bellingham officials said that operating Arne Hanna over the next 10 years will cost the city $13 million to $16 million.
Not enough swim space
Arne Hanna has about 180,000 visitors a year. That number doesn’t include spectators, according to Melissa Bianconi, the recreation manager for Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department.
When swimmers talk about crowding at Arne Hanna, they’re referring to a number of concerns:
▪ Adults and children having to share lanes while swimming laps because space is scarce at peak times. That’s for recreational and competitive swimmers. They said this has caused injuries because people swim into each other.
“This morning, it was absolutely packed and that’s not bringing in the new folks from the Y,” said Hardy, adding she had to share a lane with three other adults while swimming laps at Arne Hanna at 7:30 a.m. recently.
Ziels said that because of the age and size of the Y’s lap pool — meaning the 20-yard length of the lanes — the serious swimmers already are at Arne Hanna, arguing that YMCA users wouldn’t overwhelm the Arne Hanna space.
▪ All three Bellingham high schools use the aquatic center for practice and swim meets. Arne Hanna can be closed to other users during swim meets, as was the case on Friday, Nov. 1.
More swim lanes would prevent this, advocates said.
There’s been talk of the Bellingham School District helping to alleviate crowding by perhaps one day building a swimming facility at Carl Cozier Elementary School, which is near Arne Hanna, when it rebuilds the school in the future.
But that is not what the school district would prefer to do, according to a Bellingham School District spokeswoman.
“The need for more access to high-quality swimming facilities is a consistent concern we hear from our high school swim teams, and we also know that access to swim lessons is both a safety issue and an equity issue for children in our community,” Dana Smith, district spokeswoman, said to The Bellingham Herald.
“We’re open to a lot of possibilities,” Smith said. “Our preference is to partner with or rent from the city or an agency like the YMCA before building and running our own facility.”
▪ The current proposal doesn’t do anything about cooler-water temperatures needed so that lap swimmers, especially competitive ones, don’t feel ill while exerting themselves.
Hardy said Let’s Pool Together has, in the past, proposed a 50-meter pool with movable bulkheads. If placed in the middle, the bulkheads would create two, 25-meter pools, she said.
One economical option is to build an outdoor pool of eight to 10 lanes and then put a bubble of sorts over it in winter. Doing so would allow for cooler water temperatures for lap and competitive swimmers and free up pool space in Arne Hanna for other users, who might like to have warmer water temperatures, according to Hardy.
Bianconi said that wouldn’t work in the location under discussion.
“There simply isn’t enough land at this location to have an outdoor covered pool, and a new indoor pool for swim teams,” Bianconi said.
As for the costs of maintaining a swimming pool for the public, Hardy and other advocates said pool space at Arne Hanna, like libraries, trails and other community resources, are expensive.
She wondered if, with more space, programming could be considered that would generate more money, such as charging a premium for specialty classes like stand-up paddleboard yoga or bringing in inflatable witbits like those found in water parks in British Columbia.
As discussions continue, all sides said they’re working together in the hope of finding a solution that will work.
Because one thing that everyone seems to agree on is that Bellingham needs more indoor swimming space than what’s currently being provided for the public at Arne Hanna.
“Whether or not the YMCA builds a recreation center on land leased from the city of Bellingham, heavy use and crowding of the pool will need to be addressed at some point,” Lilliquist said.
“Bellingham has three high school swim teams, and other numerous swim clubs and groups, and many other users as well — yet we have a single large public pool for a community of 90,000,” he said.
This story was originally published November 4, 2019 at 5:00 AM.
