About two-dozen locals braved the rain Thursday night in order to offer feedback to Sonoma Splash on the Valley’s proposed swimming pool complex.
The community meeting, held at the FAHA Heritage Center amid a downpour, was staged to give locals a chance to weigh in on layout and other factors of the pool proposal, while a newly hired architect – Sonoma-based RossDrulisCusenbery – works up design ideas.
“Last night was the first pass,” said group treasurer Sam Coturri, speaking the next day in an interview with the Index-Tribune. “The next meeting will have more of a preliminary design.”
Coturri said the group has in mind three main parts to the swim facility: a 25-yard, 8-lane competition pool; a smaller, warmer and shallower “instructional pool”; and a “splash ground” wading pool for small children.
The rest of the facility, Coturri said, ideally would include a cafe or other food outlet, locker rooms and rental studio space for aerobics, ?yoga, birthday parties and so on.
There also would be a “private athletics fitness club, that is a tenant essentially,” he said. The private healthclub is a key part of the group’s business model, as having a paying tenant on site will help them afford to keep the community pool complex open.
Sonoma Splash, also known as the Sonoma Valley Health and Recreation Association, has been working to bring such a pool back to the Valley, after the closest thing to a community swim facility – the pool at Sonoma Valley High School – was plowed under several years ago.
On Oct. 31, Sonoma Splash purchased the six-acre Paul’s Resort site for an undisclosed sum. Interim Executive Director Tanya Russell said the group paid $1.5 million to close and still has payments to make on the purchase, but that they were contractually prohibited from disclosing the full purchase price.
So far the nonprofit has raised $2 million, according to Russell, and hopes to raise an additional $4 million by June. The group estimates it will need $10 million to $12 million in total to complete the project, which it hopes to have open by spring 2017.
Before all that, the group will need to relocate the nine tenants currently living at the Paul’s Resort site.
“We’ve incentivized and put together a package that would be valuable for them to be out by June,” Coturri said, describing the tenants as a “tight-knit little community.”
Most of the attendees at Thursday’s meeting were neighbors of Paul’s Resort – including residents of the Lazzarotto Mobile Home Park next door, who had suggestions for making the facility less intrusive. Others were there, Coturri said, because they are “concerned about making sure we’re building it to be as green as possible, as far as sustainability.”
Also in attendance were youth guidance leader Dave Pier of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Sonoma Valley and youth sports leader Jay Gruendle, president of Sonoma Little League. Sonoma Mayor David Cook was present as well.
“We really wanted it to be – and I think we achieved that, from our standpoint – sort of a listening session,” Coturri said.
More on the group’s plans can be found at sonomasplash.com.
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