Tonawanda, N.Y. (WBEN) - A pair of neighboring cities are hopeful to soon address the future of community pools that will help keep residents cool and comfortable in the hot summer months of Western New York.
In the City of Tonawanda, Mayor John White is looking to make some much-needed repairs to Kohler Pool in order to help keep the pool open for the long-term, rather than needing to go year-by-year to keep the pool open. However, White is looking to make the necessary fixes that won't put a burden on city taxpayers.
"We've been tired of putting Band-Aids on it, the Band-Aids keep coming off, and it needs to be redone. We need a new pool," said White in an interview with WBEN. "It's an old pool, it's satisfied a lot of families. I mean, when I was a kid riding there, we'd ride our bikes there from all different parts of the city. People walk there. It's just a great location.
"You've got filters, you've got pumps. It's a salt pool, and it's got chlorine mixed in with it. And both of them are corrosive, and your pumps and all your motors and everything, they break down very fast. And we also have the liners, the liner is gone. We've been leaking pool and water chemicals for years... we do need to get it fixed, we know that. And to be honest with you, this year, we jumped through hoops to make it happen, because we know how badly we need it, and it worked. We did it, we got it going for this year."
White says to replace the pool, the cement around it, a brand new fence, a new pool liner, the whole project is estimated to cost the city $4.5 million.
White wants to make Kohler Pool a priority for the city, because he doesn't want kids and families relying on other bodies of water that could compromise their health and safety.
"I don't want the children swimming in the river. I don't want the children swimming in the canal, and I sure as heck don't want them swimming in Ellicott Creek, and that's what will happen if we eliminate a pool," White said. "You won't be able to go to North Tonawanda, it's for North Tonawanda residents. Town of Tonawanda [pools] is for Town of Tonawanda residents. The bottom line is, this pool is a necessity. We've got 15,000 people that live in the city, and we're a small community. It's hard to get grants for a small community when the needs are that great, like what we've got."
The city is, once again, signing up for grant applications everywhere to get the necessary funding for such a project. And White feels lucky to have a grant writer in the community who has already put in the effort to help Kohler Pool thrive.
"I've got somebody who's energetic, she's got a lot of energy, she's enthusiastic and she cares. And she came to me, she's running with this thing, and I said, 'Absolutely, I will support it,'" White said of Amanda Shepler. "What she's doing is creating the grassroots. We need to get this from [going] the bottom, get everybody involved from Exchange Clubs, Kiwanis Club, the Rotary Club, all the organizations behind it and get excited about it, because it's something that's needed in the city."
While the city is confident the pool will remain open for the remainder of 2025 and is planning to open the pool again for 2026, White knows the support has to come from all parts of the city to make this project work for residents.
"Anything that comes up, be there, show the strength in numbers. And then when we go to do the grant, we submit all this with the grant, it just adds to the seriousness of the whole city's behind it. That's where the grassroots efforts start," White said. "It's just the beginning. We just started this effort now, so it's not going to happen overnight, but we need everybody be positive, energetic.
"It's not going to come out of our pockets, we can't afford it. We're considered a low-income community, so we need to get this grant, and there may be a match. What if they say, 'Alright, I'm going to give you $4.5 million, and it's a 20% match.' I mean, we can't absorb that. So we're looking for help from all directions."
Across the Erie Canal in North Tonawanda, officials are waiting for the final pieces from New York State to move forward with an $8.4 million project to completely revamp the historic Payne Park Memorial Pool along Payne Avenue.
Mayor Austin Tylec says the city was able to acquire almost all of the funding in grants, with the hopes of commencing the project sometime this fall.
"A lot of times when we get these grants, there's a lot of papers that's shuffled back-and-forth to the city, state, federal, whatever funding agency. That's really the delay in a lot of this," Tylec explained with WBEN. "If we had $8.4 million just on hand to build the pool, it'd be a lot quicker, but it would cost us a lot more money then. So we're pretty grateful, at least, that we were able to acquire, more or less, all the money needed to cover the construction of the pool, which is very exciting."
Tylec understands it's how frustrating of a summer it has been for residents, especially with how hot the temperatures have been in recent weeks. That's why Tylec has found other ways to help residents stay cool this summer while the final details are being hammered out for Payne Park Memorial Pool.
"We've tried to maintain the existing raindrop pool that's there just for the younger kids to use and cool off, but it is very old," Tylec noted. "We've had some issues with the pumps there. I believe we're up-and-running now, but we worked out a deal with the school district as well in the past couple years, where we could still use their facilities while we design and acquire funding so kids could still learn how to swim."
Tylec is hopeful that with construction for the Payne Park Memorial Pool set to begin sometime this fall, the city is able to get, at least, a couple of months for people to enjoy the new pool next summer.
So what's in the cards for the new Payne Park Memorial Pool once construction is completed?
"Right now, we have enough space on the site to create this new facility, and some of the features with it," Tylec explained. "There is the splash pad piece of it, however, there is going to be a lap pool with a diving board, there are multiple slides. There's one of those big buckets that dumps water, it's sort of a playground water feature on it. And all these shaded areas, spray features, and a new concession building with locker rooms as well. So it really is everything that the community really expressed wanting in the new facility. It's for all ages, it's zero entry. Those who may be in a wheelchair or have some kind of disability, it's accessible for them as well."
What is potentially being considered with the existing Memorial Pool that has been designated as historic? Tylec acknowledges there are some restrictions the city has with some potential opportunities.
"But even when we looked at a lot of ideas that were thrown around, one of them was, 'What if we cut it in half and created an entrance out of it?' Even that cost alone looked to be close to $2 million to do something like that with the demo and then the restructuring of it," he said. "So now we really wanted to get through the new pool, the funding, make sure that that was in line because we knew it was going to take some time to do. And now we're really going to take a look at the existing pool and see what options we have, really."