Dundee Township Park District’s Sleepy Hollow swimming pool lost a staggering 3.8 million gallons of water this past summer. Some sections of the interior have duct tape patching and others have rusted out.
Plans to reopen the pool in 2024 are being reevaluated as are what the next steps sould be, Park District Executive Director Dave Peterson told the Dundee Township Park Board at a meeting Wednesday night.
Repairs are expected to cost $20 million, money that might be better spent rebuilding the pool or opening a new one elsewhere, Peterson said. Neither could be done without voters approving a tax increase or bond sale referendum to pay for it, he said.
“It takes a lot of patching to get this up and going (every year),” he said. “We have a lot of challenges and they’ve exponentially gotten worse over the last several years.”
Board members decided last spring to keep the pool open for the 2024 season provided the integrity of its shell remained in usable condition. That hasn’t been the case; the pool is crumbling and its water loss is huge, Peterson said.
To put it into perspective, he said the park district’s water tower at Randall Oaks Park in West Dundee has a capacity of 1 million gallons. Sleepy Hollow pool lost the equivalent of almost four of those water towers in one summer, he said.
Environmentally, it’s a big concern for the district, Peterson said.
Paying for repairs or a new pool is another dilemma.
“A referendum is a big ask. There’s not a big appetite for referendums in this day and age,” Peterson said.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have the monies to just be able to replace this pool. We can’t use the existing shell. We’d have to start all over.”
The district plans to research how Dundee Township voters would feel about increasing taxes to fund new construction, Peterson said.
Sleepy Hollow residents who attended the meeting made it clear they want the pool open and at the same location.
Sleepy Hollow Village Board Trustee Kelly Thomas said her son went to the pool as a child, which was a safe for him to be able to bike to with his friends.
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“Why has a Band-Aid been continually put on this when it should’ve been fixed a long time ago?” Thomas asked.
Her opinion is home values in Sleepy Hollow would drop without a pool in town, she said, and she’s concerned the board has already made up its mind to close their pool and build a new one somewhere else.
Dundee Township Park District has two other pools in addition to the one in Sleepy Hollow — Dolphin Cove Aquatic Center, an outdoor facility, and the indoor pool at the Rakow Center, both in Carpentersville.
Sleepy Hollow pool was built in the late 1950s or early 1960s as part of a privately owned country club. The district purchased both for $120,000 in 1972 and altered its L-shaped configuration to create a zero-depth pool in 1986, , Peterson said.
Improvements have been made throughout the years, including a new filtration system in 2006, he said.
“We’ve been keeping it running since then, but the challenges have continued and become greater and greater,” he said.
The park district has worked with architects and engineers in an attempt to solve the problems that plague the structure but without success, Peterson said.
Generations of families, including Peterson’s, have been regulars at the pool over its 60-plus year history, he said. He learned to swim at the pool as a child and worked there early in his career. It remains a community pool to a new generation, although it is open to all Dundee Township residents and guests.
Christine Fuqua, a Sleepy Hollow resident since 2011, said her children take swim lessons at the pool in the summer. Her husband’s family has lived in the village since 1988.
“This is where my daughters first learned to jump off a diving board. This is where all three of my kids take swimming lessons every summer. This is where we come to have camp,” she said.
“We don’t choose (to go to) Rakow because they love Sleepy Hollow and they love that they can take lessons here,” Fuqua said. “This is where we can be relaxed, in our community. This is just a pool where they can splash around and have fun.”
Gloria Casas is a freelance reporter for The Courier-News.