‘Splash’ pulls plug on Springs pool plans

Nonprofit to sell Verano site; will seek alternate location for community pool|

After four years navigating the rough waters that come with building a community pool at the site of the former Paul’s Resort, Sonoma Splash is finally pulling the plug. The nonprofit announced this week it was abandoning plans to build a community pool on the 6-acre parcel at 175 W. Verano Ave. it purchased in 2014.

While dreams of kids cannonballing from poolside may have dried at the Verano property – the Splash team is still intent on finding a location for a first-rate community swimming hole.

“We’re moving on from the Verano site,” Paul Favaro, president of the Sonoma Splash board, said. “But we’re not crushed, we’re excited.”

The organization’s six board members – Paul and Mary Favaro, Sam Coturri, Arden Kremer, Mayor Madolyn Agrimonti and former mayor Ken Brown – gathered last week after negotiations with another housing partner – their seventh – went south.

“The market told us that something other than a community pool needed to be built on the Verano site,” Favaro said.

That site, long derelict, once housed Paul’s Resort, a renowned playground for summer visitors seeking repose. A portion of the compound was developed into a kids’ ballfield decades ago, and Sonoma’s little leaguers play baseball there still. It’s one of the last large commercially-zoned tracts of undeveloped land left in the Valley.

“We went big when we bought it,” acknowledged board member Sam Coturri. “It’s an incredible property, the best in Sonoma. It’s the only thing like it left in town.”

But there are other properties that could suit a community pool project, according to Splash – the nonprofit more officially known as the Sonoma Valley Health and Recreation Association – and the board members still have their eyes on the prize. “We’re going to sell it and pursue our mission,” Favaro said.

That mission is to democratize swimming for Valley residents.

“It’s our long-stated goal to have every third-grader in the Valley know how to swim,” Coturri said. “Access to water can be such a socio-economic dividing line. If you are affluent enough to have a pool in your backyard – or access to a club or gym pool - you learn how to swim. But just about monthly an article pops up somewhere in the local papers about a drowning victim, and it’s way too often that the victim has a Latin surname.”

Added Favaro: “The drowning numbers for minorities is ridiculous.”

The two men share an easy camaraderie, riffing off one another’s ideas, sometimes finishing each other’s sentences. They’ve been collaborating on creation of a public swimming facility in the Valley since 2010, and are effectively now each other’s aquatic ride or die.

In eight years of joint effort, they’ve had highs and lows: site selection, fundraising, public relations, and the vetting of fiscally prudent partnerships. Finance is Favaro’s particular bailiwick, after a lifetime of professional business strategy consulting.

“Community pools are easy to build. But community pools are hard to keep open, and our group – from day one – has been committed to a business model that will keep it open,” Favaro said.

The model the Splash board determined was needed for sustainability necessitated partnering with a housing developer on the six-acre Paul’s Resort property. Efforts to that end, continuous since the 2014 purchase and involving seven different entities, were complicated.

“The negotiations were complex because they involved commercial and residential requirements; they involved coordinating design, infrastructure and construction on a single site between for-profit and not-for-profit entities; they involved county and state funding and affordable housing; they involved contingencies for either party exiting the project; they involved engaging with County Parks as well as PRMD, Public Works, VOM Water and the Supervisor’s office,” Favaro said.

Asked how much time he had dedicated to those efforts, Favaro smiled. “I spend more time on this pool than I do consulting.”

Despite all those man-hours, a deal failed to materialize. The property will go on the market next month.

“It’s time to stop sitting on it. Let somebody make use of it,” Coturri said.

A call to the listing real estate agent, Chuck Lamp of Sotheby’s, for the asking price was not returned as of press time.

Meanwhile, Splash continues to pursue its agenda.

“We informed the school district Monday (of plans to sell the Verano site), and have already had a couple of constructive discussions about potentially working with them,” Favaro said. “One of the alternatives we would be looking at now is a joint project with the school district, probably on the high school site.”

Coturri, who graduated from SVHS in 2001, acknowledged that partnering with the school district may also prove complicated.

“On the high school site, you have access restrictions, and rightfully so. Keeping kids safe is the first priority,” he said. “But we’re a nonprofit, and our first priority is allowing access for the community to the pool, so the middle of the high school doesn’t work. It can’t go where the old pool was.”

However, Bruce Abbott, the Sonoma Valley Unified School District’s head of business services, still sees potential at the site of the old pool in the middle of campus.

“I was just studying this today, and I see a way to drive to that location, I see a parking area there,” said Abbott. “Of course we would need to secure the pool area while it was being used for school services. It would have to exclusively be a school pool during the day.”

Still, Abbott described a potential collaboration with Splash as a “positive.”

“We’d really be using our bond dollars so that more of the community can benefit,” said Abbott.

Splash put $1.5 million down on an undisclosed balance when they purchased the Verano property in 2014. The expenditures on mortgage, property taxes, and insurance represent 80 percent of what they’ve spent on it since then, according to Favaro.

Still, Splash expects to exit the transaction with reasonable equity. “We feel confident,” Favaro said. “Though you never know how these things will go, but we expect we’ll pull enough equity out to pursue our mission on an alternative site.”

Excepting that equity, however, the organization is effectively back to square one, schooled by the steep learning curve of nearly a decade of effort.

Both men seem a bit wearied by the journey, though sanguine about the Verano site’s eventual development. “This is a clean site,” Favaro said. “It could be one of the first major projects in the Valley in the wake of October’s fires. So that could be a positive outcome, a win-win. The last developer we were in negotiation with expressed interest in buying the whole parcel.”

Likewise, they intend to renegotiate the deal struck with the city in 2014 for a 10-year commitment of $25,000 annually to offset the cost of pool access for low-income residents. “Their pledge was to support programming at a community pool. It wasn’t dependent on location. In spirit and functionality, here it is. The same deal they approved three-and-a-half years ago,” Favaro said.

However, Sonoma City Manager Cathy Capriola notes that the agreement does reference a specific property location. “Based on a change in location,” Capriola told the Index-Tribune, “the City would need to review the agreement and determine if it requires amendment.”

It has been said that hope springs eternal, and the Sonoma Splash board seems to embody that trope. Favaro and Coturri remain determined to succeed, undeterred by the long journey undertaken so far.

“By the way, if anyone has other ideas, we’re eager to hear them,” Favaro said.

One thing is clear: If they’re going to build a community pool, they’re intent on doing it right.

“We could have gotten it built several times for the sake of having a hole in the ground with water in it,” Coturri said. “But if you can’t use it in a way that keeps it open, you might as well just have a hole in the ground.”

Contact Kate at kate.williams@sonomanews.com.

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