METAMORA, Ill. – It was standing-room only Monday night at the Metamora Park District’s monthly meeting, as dozens of residents were there asking that the town’s 57-year-old pool be saved.
The park district recently announced that the Metamora Community Pool would close at the end of this season, saying it is too expensive to maintain and attendance isn’t high enough.
The park district proposed building a new facility that could include meeting spaces, sports fields, and a new pool. But, many residents aren’t ready to give up the city’s pool with only the possibility of another pool in the future.
“Those of us that have kids, they’re only kids now, so if you wait five years, that’s their childhood, and it’s gone,” one woman said. “I know it’s only five years, but we lose that, so I think if we could have a bridge.”
The park district’s annual budget is $500,000; the board says they lose about $50,000 of that to the pool each year.
Several groups have offered to help pay for the upkeep of the pool, including a fundraising committee and the Metamora Park Foundation, but without maintenance receipts, the groups can’t share that money, according to 25 News.
“Ever since it came out in the news, people have been coming out of the woodworks, like, ‘How can we help financially or buy your services to help fix the pool,’ If you gave us more time, we could raise so much more money,” another woman said.
The Metamora Pool manager says during the first few weeks of the season, its maximum attendance was 80 people, and its lowest attendance was 25, not including swim lessons or swim teams.
People involved with the Metamora High School swim team, which practices at the pool, worry without it, swimming will die off in Metamora.
“The pool is absolutely the reason we have such a big swim presence in Metamora and why we were able to produce swimmers like Olympic hopeful Anna Peplowski and Justin Alderson, who I grew up swimming with,” a former Metamora High School swim member said. “We will absolutely not be able to recover from even a four-year gap with no pool in this community.”
Park board members are asking the community to speak to the village board about the pool’s future.
