Apr 27, 2017 By Harry Funk 3 min read

In three-plus decades with Peters Township, Paul Lauer has heard at least one constant with regard to a wish list for residents.

“I’ve been here since ’84, and every time we ask the community what they would like, the outdoor pool always comes out on top,” he said. “And the impediment to that, up to this point, has been there hasn’t been land to do it.”

With the township’s acquisition of about 90 acres of the former Rolling Hills Country Club property, such a situation no longer holds true.

“We should not get ourselves in a bind where we program that property in such a way that if a future council or this council wants to build an aquatics facility, we can’t because we’ve committed it to other purposes,” the township manager said.

Lauer commented from a local historical perspective during a protracted discussion at township council’s April 24 meeting with regard to plans for developing Peters Hill Park on the municipality’s portion of the Rolling Hills site. Peters Township School District is taking over slightly more than half of the property.

Council addressed a series of “guiding principles” for a Peters Hill master plan, on which Mackin Engineering of Findlay Township is consulting.

One of the stated objectives is that the park is to “incorporate a community aquatics facility.” The sentence originally was proposed to include “designed more as a water park as opposed to a competitive pool,” but council voted to eliminate the latter portion.

“We should just leave everything on the table, because in my opinion, to get to a pool situation isn’t going to happen in the short term,” council Chairman Frank Arcuri said. “I just don’t see us having the money to do that.”

Meanwhile, the school district faces its own swimming pool issue.

District officials have discussed building a new high school on the former Rolling Hills property. While the existing high school has a natatorium, Thomas McMurray, school board president, acknowledged at a recent meeting that such a facility “does not fall under the academically required.”

The possibility exists for the district and municipality to combine efforts in some manner to suit both recreational and competitive swimmers. But no one so far has been able to locate a comparable situation.

“You will not find – at least, I haven’t been able to, and I asked the school district if they could – a municipality that owns a competitive indoor swimming pool anywhere in the state of Pennsylvania,” Lauer said. “I don’t think it exists.”

Financial considerations could be a factor.

“The problem you have with indoor competitive pools is that you can’t recover the operating cost of the pool,” Lauer explained. “And so with those pools, you should be prepared to absorb all of the operating costs.”

More viable could be a “water park,” or revenue-generating facility.

“These kinds of pools have shown themselves, when run well, to be able to cover their operating costs and some of their maintenance costs,” Lauer told council.

As for the country club’s swimming pool, the township received a report that it is not salvageable and is a safety hazard.

“We are in the process of soliciting proposals to fill in the pool,” Lauer said. “We have located is a source of fill, so once we, in fact, get a contractor on board, we’ll be able to do that relatively quickly.”