Sunday, March 9, 2014
Juanita Pool Update - may close by 2017
Here is an update about the Juanita Pool and the 2014 school levy: http://www.kirklandwa.gov/depart/parks/Park_Planning___Development/Aquatic_Center_Partnership_Project.htm. The Lake Washington School District has decided that even if the bond passes, the Juanita Aquatic Center will not be included in the bond plans. It is possible that the Juanita Aquatic Center may close as early as 2017.
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Agenda & Meeting notes with Wave Aquatics - Feb 19, 2014
Meeting Notes for RIVERVIEW POOL
Wednesday, February 19 2014 at Juanita Starbucks Attendees: Sara Baquero-Garcia, Jennifer Dotson, Tyson Wellock
I - Introductions
II - Vision & Mission
We envision a local (not regional) facility owned by the City of Duvall or the Riverview School District and operated by a nonprofit like Wave Aquatics or the YMCA that opens by 2023.
Mission:
We will plan, acquire funding for, and develop a public aquatics facility within the geographic area of the Riverview School District to serve the competitive sports and recreational needs of residents of all abilities and ages.
Right now, here is a map of how far people have to travel from Duvall to get to either a pool or a public beach. People have to drive at least 25 minutes each way. If there's any traffic on Novelty Hill or the Woodinville-Duvall Road, this number can easily be higher. Duvall & Carnation are the only incorporated cities in King County that require more than a 15 minute drive to swimming.
III - Where we are now
· Sara Baquero-Garcia attended 3 farmers markets this summer & fall.
· Sara attended the City Council meeting on September 26th to introduce herself.
· Sara attended a Riverview School District meeting to introduce the project.
· We started http://duvallpool.blogspot.com to start centralizing info.
· DIVES had our 1st team meeting November 16th and has met monthly since.
· Several team members have started investigating business models of both local pools and pools in areas with similar populations. Initially, it looks like it is necessary for a community to have at least 10,000 people to even consider a pool. The city limits of Duvall currently has a little over 7,000 but the immediate area around Duvall has about 15,000 so we may be approaching critical mass. Certainly within 10 years the population should be able to sustain a pool.
· Mari researched documents from previous failed pool attempts around Duvall and Carnation, including the Eastman Rush pool.
· We introduced ourselves to the Duvall City Planner, who was on the Board of Directors for the Monroe YMCA development of their pool. The idea of a community pool is now in the Duvall Comprehensive Plan and will be included in the discussion when the City dives into recreation planning this summer.
· We have started researching nonprofit status requirements and we hope to attain nonprofit status by September 1, 2014.
IV- Our next steps
3. After our initial review of broad business models, we need to start investigating the next level of business models to see if we can find one that could work. This will ultimately require a feasibility study, although there is some research we can do before commissioning a professional report.
V - Questions for Tyson:
1. We know that Wave Aquatics is launching a
campaign for a new pool in the Kirkland / Juanita area. We dream of a small, local pool targeting
families of the Riverview School District rather than a regional facility. Would Wave see us as a “competitor” somehow? (Just wanted to break the ice.)
3. Are there opportunities for us to volunteer with Wave’s current projects?
VI - Comments from Tyson:
1. When the St. Edwards Pool was hungry for a steady revenue source, they partnered with a synchronized swimming team. While this did provide the expected revenue, it cannibalized so much pool time that the opportunity cost of other lost revenue exceed the benefit.
2. From an operations standpoint, swimming lessons is the single best generator of revenue.
3. Deriving operations costs from a potential future Parks Department is risky as funding can be cut off in economic slumps. However, they consistently set aside parks department funds into a maintenance pool. Then, when a new roof or other predictable operations costs emerge, they draw from that pool.
4. To support a swim team, a 6 lane pool is required.
5. A 6 lane 25 yard pre-fabricated pool generally runs about $500,000. A seasonal bubble for a pool of that size generally runs about $1M. A facility this size would require less than an acre for a building, but over an acre for parking. Expect to require at least 2.5 acres for a small facility.
6. A swim team needs starting platforms & one end of the pool to be 7' or 8' deep for liability reasons.
7. Diving boards of any kind add a huge cost to liability insurance.
8. To support a swim team, swimming lessons, and recreational use, a 6x25 pool probably would not suffice. Possibly an L-shaped pool would work, but during swim meets, it could be hard to do lessons & free swim in one half of the L.
9. When looking at building an economic model, Wave Aquatics considers 3%-5% of the general population as potential users of a pool. However, they work with the Lake Washington School District, who only have 25% of households with children in school. 75% of households have zero children in K-12. Duvall's demographics may be different than Kirkland, although we don't have data on that. Looking at 3% - 5% of 15,000 people around Duvall, that would translate to 450 to 750 people interested in using a pool at some point during the year.
10. At the Redmond & Juanita Pools, they require 100 kids in swim lessons every month to break even. In the summer, they have hundreds of kids.
11. In addition to the Bellevue Aquatics Feasibility Study we have already gone through, he mentioned that some other municipalities have also conducted feasibility studies in the past decade, including Redmond, Kirkland, and Bothell.
12. Right now, Wave Aquatics is looking at building a new aquatic facility between Kirkland & Redmond. With the success of some pools and failures of others, he says that data indicates that driving more than 15 minutes, or crossing a significant boundary like 405 is a huge deterrent for people. When trying to determine a site, they put a pencil on a map and draw a 15 minute circle around it. That defines the potential general population for the pool.
Wednesday, February 19 2014 at Juanita Starbucks Attendees: Sara Baquero-Garcia, Jennifer Dotson, Tyson Wellock
I - Introductions
II - Vision & Mission
We shared our vision & mission:
Vision:
We envision a public pool within the geographic area of
the Riverview School District where children can play, the high school could
host a swim team, people of all ages and abilities can develop and grow their
aquatic skills and fitness, and the community can come together to enjoy the
water as a part of family life year-round.
We envision a local (not regional) facility owned by the City of Duvall or the Riverview School District and operated by a nonprofit like Wave Aquatics or the YMCA that opens by 2023.
Mission:
We will plan, acquire funding for, and develop a public aquatics facility within the geographic area of the Riverview School District to serve the competitive sports and recreational needs of residents of all abilities and ages.
Right now, here is a map of how far people have to travel from Duvall to get to either a pool or a public beach. People have to drive at least 25 minutes each way. If there's any traffic on Novelty Hill or the Woodinville-Duvall Road, this number can easily be higher. Duvall & Carnation are the only incorporated cities in King County that require more than a 15 minute drive to swimming.
III - Where we are now
· Sara Baquero-Garcia attended 3 farmers markets this summer & fall.
· Sara attended the City Council meeting on September 26th to introduce herself.
· Sara attended a Riverview School District meeting to introduce the project.
· We started http://duvallpool.blogspot.com to start centralizing info.
· DIVES had our 1st team meeting November 16th and has met monthly since.
· Several team members have started investigating business models of both local pools and pools in areas with similar populations. Initially, it looks like it is necessary for a community to have at least 10,000 people to even consider a pool. The city limits of Duvall currently has a little over 7,000 but the immediate area around Duvall has about 15,000 so we may be approaching critical mass. Certainly within 10 years the population should be able to sustain a pool.
· Mari researched documents from previous failed pool attempts around Duvall and Carnation, including the Eastman Rush pool.
· We introduced ourselves to the Duvall City Planner, who was on the Board of Directors for the Monroe YMCA development of their pool. The idea of a community pool is now in the Duvall Comprehensive Plan and will be included in the discussion when the City dives into recreation planning this summer.
· We have started researching nonprofit status requirements and we hope to attain nonprofit status by September 1, 2014.
IV- Our next steps
1. Acquire 501(c)3 status. We will need to start raising approximately $1000 to cover the legal,
accounting, and filing fees.
2. Start fundraising to understand & develop
community support.3. After our initial review of broad business models, we need to start investigating the next level of business models to see if we can find one that could work. This will ultimately require a feasibility study, although there is some research we can do before commissioning a professional report.
3. Are there opportunities for us to volunteer with Wave’s current projects?
VI - Comments from Tyson:
1. When the St. Edwards Pool was hungry for a steady revenue source, they partnered with a synchronized swimming team. While this did provide the expected revenue, it cannibalized so much pool time that the opportunity cost of other lost revenue exceed the benefit.
2. From an operations standpoint, swimming lessons is the single best generator of revenue.
3. Deriving operations costs from a potential future Parks Department is risky as funding can be cut off in economic slumps. However, they consistently set aside parks department funds into a maintenance pool. Then, when a new roof or other predictable operations costs emerge, they draw from that pool.
4. To support a swim team, a 6 lane pool is required.
5. A 6 lane 25 yard pre-fabricated pool generally runs about $500,000. A seasonal bubble for a pool of that size generally runs about $1M. A facility this size would require less than an acre for a building, but over an acre for parking. Expect to require at least 2.5 acres for a small facility.
6. A swim team needs starting platforms & one end of the pool to be 7' or 8' deep for liability reasons.
7. Diving boards of any kind add a huge cost to liability insurance.
8. To support a swim team, swimming lessons, and recreational use, a 6x25 pool probably would not suffice. Possibly an L-shaped pool would work, but during swim meets, it could be hard to do lessons & free swim in one half of the L.
9. When looking at building an economic model, Wave Aquatics considers 3%-5% of the general population as potential users of a pool. However, they work with the Lake Washington School District, who only have 25% of households with children in school. 75% of households have zero children in K-12. Duvall's demographics may be different than Kirkland, although we don't have data on that. Looking at 3% - 5% of 15,000 people around Duvall, that would translate to 450 to 750 people interested in using a pool at some point during the year.
10. At the Redmond & Juanita Pools, they require 100 kids in swim lessons every month to break even. In the summer, they have hundreds of kids.
11. In addition to the Bellevue Aquatics Feasibility Study we have already gone through, he mentioned that some other municipalities have also conducted feasibility studies in the past decade, including Redmond, Kirkland, and Bothell.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
The Duvall / Riverview Area Pool team needs a name!
Help! We need a name!
We are starting the process of creating an official 501(c)3 organization. This process is can be a lengthy and expensive process to undertake, but it is a necessary step that will allow us to more effectively network with potential partners and to start fundraising. Wouldn't it be great to get nonprofit status established in time for the corporate giving (& matching) season this fall? We think so.
There are very specific requirements outlined by the law for attaining nonprofit status, including:
- Organizing Documents, including:
- Corporate Charter
- Articles of Incorporation
- Articles of Association
- A Trust Instrument
- Governance Policy Summary
There will also be several costs involved with receiving official 501(c)3 status. The main costs include:
- IRS Form 1023 - $750 user fee. Generally takes 60 days for letter of determination.
- Washington State Business License for Nonprofit in Duvall - $74
- Charities Program of Washington State - up to $85
- Legal review - fee unknown at this time
- Accounting review - fee unknown at this time
We are early in the process, so how can you help?
1. Go to our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/LetsBuildACommunityPoolInDuvall & click "like" to get involved & receive updates.
2. From our facebook page, visit our blog with more detailed updates: http://duvallpool.blogspot.com. You can also donate to help get this project launched! Do you have fundraising ideas? Send Sara a message from the facebook page & let her know you want to volunteer!
3. As we start putting together the required documents, we need to have an official name in place.
Reply to Sara's thread asking for name ideas. The winner will receive a big public thank you on facebook. We hope that the pool will serve the geographic area of the Riverview School District (although we're not an official partner of the school district at this time.) We hope the name reflects an area larger than Duvall but something more local than the entire Snoqualmie Valley. Here are some key words to consider, although all creative ideas are welcome! Let's hear your great ideas!
- Riverview
- Riverview Area
- North Snoqualmie (does this sound like it's for the north part of the city of Snoqualmie?)
- Community
- Pool
- Aquatic Center
Saturday, January 25, 2014
Meeting notes - January 25, 2014
Committee Meeting Notes for RIVERVIEW POOL
Saturday, January 25, 2014 at Duvall Library
Attendees: Sara Baquero-Garcia, Jennifer Dotson.
Several people were out today for family reasons.
Old Business:
1. Update on Riverview meetings - Sara met with the Riverview School Board. While the school district is not able to officially partner with the pool initiative at this point, there is general interest and support for the idea.
2. Update on meeting with City Planner - Jennifer met with the Duvall City Planner. While the city is not able to officially partner with the pool initiative at this point, there is general interest and support for the idea. The City Planner has the idea of a pool on the radar for the 10 year Comprehensive Plan. In the summer of 2014, the Planning team will dive into recreational planning for the city and the pool initiative will be invited to any relevant discussions.
3. In the fall of 2013, some regional representatives were contacted. Senator Andy Hill http://andyhill.src.wastateleg.org/ replied back with some grant writing ideas. We are following up on researching more about these.
4. Update on pool research - Veronika and Mari sent updates on research they did on pools in towns around 10,000 people. At this point, only a handful of pools have been found in smaller communities. More research needs to be done, but current findings have been posted to the "Small Town Pools" tab at http://duvallpool.blogspot.com/p/small-town-pools.html.
5. Update on old document research - Mari spent time researching old documents left over from the Eastman Rush pool initiative and sent out an update.
6. Update on nonprofit status - Nothing has been started yet in investigating requirements for nonprofit status.
7. We brainstormed a name that represents an area broader than the city of Duvall limits but keeps it narrower than the entire Snoqualmie Valley. Since we are targeting the physical area around the Riverview School District, we decided on calling ourselves the Riverview Pool. We hope that this doesn't cause too much confusion. Hopefully, once it's clarified that the name reflects that we hope to serve the people around the school district rather than being an official part of the school district (which we're not) that people will understand.
New Business:
1. Our top priority is coming up with a plan to obtain nonprofit status. It sounds like it could take up to a year and $1000, although we hope to acquire status by September 2014 if possible so that we're ready for the corporate giving campaign season. It may not be possible in a 6 month timeframe but we will investigate to see what our next steps need to be.
2. We will meet with WAVE Aquatics, the nonprofit that runs some of the pools in Redmond, to talk about possible resources and get on their radar as a possible partner.
3. We will try to meet with the city to give them an update and keep them in the loop.
4. Sara will meet with at least one local business person to talk about fundraising ideas.
5. We talked about some interesting information that Steph discovered about operating a nonprofit pool.
6. As a team, we need to come up with fundraising ideas, both as short term projects to help pay for an attorney & accountant for nonprofit status, as well as longer term after 501(c)3 status is acquired.
7. Sara is looking into a logo and business cards to help with communication.
We plan to meet again in February 2014 and the date will be sent to the team once scheduled.
Saturday, January 25, 2014 at Duvall Library
Attendees: Sara Baquero-Garcia, Jennifer Dotson.
Several people were out today for family reasons.
Old Business:
1. Update on Riverview meetings - Sara met with the Riverview School Board. While the school district is not able to officially partner with the pool initiative at this point, there is general interest and support for the idea.
2. Update on meeting with City Planner - Jennifer met with the Duvall City Planner. While the city is not able to officially partner with the pool initiative at this point, there is general interest and support for the idea. The City Planner has the idea of a pool on the radar for the 10 year Comprehensive Plan. In the summer of 2014, the Planning team will dive into recreational planning for the city and the pool initiative will be invited to any relevant discussions.
3. In the fall of 2013, some regional representatives were contacted. Senator Andy Hill http://andyhill.src.wastateleg.org/ replied back with some grant writing ideas. We are following up on researching more about these.
4. Update on pool research - Veronika and Mari sent updates on research they did on pools in towns around 10,000 people. At this point, only a handful of pools have been found in smaller communities. More research needs to be done, but current findings have been posted to the "Small Town Pools" tab at http://duvallpool.blogspot.com/p/small-town-pools.html.
5. Update on old document research - Mari spent time researching old documents left over from the Eastman Rush pool initiative and sent out an update.
6. Update on nonprofit status - Nothing has been started yet in investigating requirements for nonprofit status.
7. We brainstormed a name that represents an area broader than the city of Duvall limits but keeps it narrower than the entire Snoqualmie Valley. Since we are targeting the physical area around the Riverview School District, we decided on calling ourselves the Riverview Pool. We hope that this doesn't cause too much confusion. Hopefully, once it's clarified that the name reflects that we hope to serve the people around the school district rather than being an official part of the school district (which we're not) that people will understand.
New Business:
1. Our top priority is coming up with a plan to obtain nonprofit status. It sounds like it could take up to a year and $1000, although we hope to acquire status by September 2014 if possible so that we're ready for the corporate giving campaign season. It may not be possible in a 6 month timeframe but we will investigate to see what our next steps need to be.
2. We will meet with WAVE Aquatics, the nonprofit that runs some of the pools in Redmond, to talk about possible resources and get on their radar as a possible partner.
3. We will try to meet with the city to give them an update and keep them in the loop.
4. Sara will meet with at least one local business person to talk about fundraising ideas.
5. We talked about some interesting information that Steph discovered about operating a nonprofit pool.
6. As a team, we need to come up with fundraising ideas, both as short term projects to help pay for an attorney & accountant for nonprofit status, as well as longer term after 501(c)3 status is acquired.
7. Sara is looking into a logo and business cards to help with communication.
We plan to meet again in February 2014 and the date will be sent to the team once scheduled.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)