Foundations provide final pieces of funding for Rotterdam pool Saturday, January 12, 2013 By Justin Mason (Contact)
ROTTERDAM — Fixing the only indoor pool serving the Boys & Girls Clubs of Schenectady won’t be an easy task.
Entire sections of the 75,000-gallon, steel-shell structure are compromised and need to be replaced. The pool’s gutter system — a leaky network of PVC piping that caused parts of the shell to crack — also needs to be removed, as do a pair of failing dehumidifiers.
“From top to bottom, everything either needs to be fixed or replaced,” said Shane Bargy, the clubs’ executive director.
And it won’t be cheap either. The repairs to the pool are expected to cost upward of $325,000 — a sum that’s not easily raised by the youth organization.
But the clubs’ board of directors quickly pulled together roughly $220,000 in the months after the pool’s initial failure in April. Now, a pair of Schenectady foundations have pulled together to provide the remaining funds necessary for repairs and then hopefully establish a fund the clubs can use to keep the pool in top condition for decades to come.
In late December, the Schenectady Foundation approved a $100,000 grant toward the repairs, with $25,000 set aside as a challenge for the clubs to match. In addition, the Carlilian Foundation presented the clubs with $20,000 toward the project.
Bargy said the funding will help the project get under way next month and hopefully finish sometime in September. Without the grants, he doubted the pool would have opened at all this year.
“It would be delayed for who knows how long — probably a couple years,” he said Friday after announcing the grants. “They really saved the day.”
The youth organization operates four other pools in the region, but Rotterdam is its only indoor facility. The pool is used by thousands of area youth and senior citizens, in addition to many of the clubs’ members, during the winter months.
Though located in a suburban area, the pool often provides an opportunity for inner city youth to learn how to swim. Before its closure, roughly 700 children attended swimming lessons at the pool annually, many of them from lower-income families.
“It’s obviously a highly used facility,” said Robert Carreau, executive director of the Schenectady Foundation. “It’s one of the few indoor facilities that’s really available on a regular basis for a really low cost.”
The pool at the clubhouse dates to the 1940s, when it was built out of airplane steel to serve a local Army depot. The Boys & Girls Clubs of Schenectady has used the facility since 1971 and has periodically done repairs.
The B AND G club an afterthought......glad that it will be repaired......youth of Rotterdam need more attention than the Senior Center and hiring a cook full time.....is it true that this position
has become CSEA and will need the applicant to take a test???????????.........Good luck Peannut...
Patches- as long as the politicians can't control this organization and the 'unions' can't take it over, it will continue to be an afterthought to the 'leaders.' Seniors on the other hand can be easily manipulated with bullschit...
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
Patches- as long as the politicians can't control this organization and the 'unions' can't take it over, it will continue to be an afterthought to the 'leaders.' Seniors on the other hand can be easily manipulated with bullschit...
very true....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
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