PORT ANGELES — Steve Burke gets the question all the time.
The Shore Aquatic Center is still scheduled to open in June, the pool’s executive director said Tuesday.
“I want to print up a shirt that says ‘We are still planning to open in June,’ ” said Burke, executive director of the Port Angeles pool.
“We’re right on budget, and we’re right on time. So sometime in June.”
The Port Angeles aquatic center formerly known as William Shore Memorial Pool has been closed since May 2019 for a $20 million renovation and 10,000 square-foot expansion.
After demolishing much of the old building last fall, crews have completed a steel frame for the new facility at the corner of Fifth and Lincoln streets.
Cross-laminated timber panels were being installed this week on sections of the roof, Burke told a Port Angeles Business Association audience.
The panels are made of three plies of hemlock and a single ply of fir.
“They just pick them right off of the semi truck and put them right on the roof,” Burke told about two dozen PABA members at their weekly breakfast meeting at Joshua’s Restaurant.
“We did that whole roof on the east side and the west side in a single day.”
The new aquatic center will have a lap pool, one-meter diving board, warm-water pool for exercise therapy and swim lessons, a children’s pool with a beach entry and a 10- to 12-person spa with 104-degree water.
The kids’ pool will have swirling splash features like a “lazy river” and “vortex ring.”
“We decided to do a lazy river instead of a slide because the lazy river actually can be used all day,” Burke said.
“A lot of seniors will use it during the day for resistance walking, to walk against the current, and then the kids use it as much as you give it to them.”
Burke said he expected at least a 30-percent spike in pool attendance when the facility reopens.
“When we shut down, we were averaging about 100,000 visits per year,” Burke said.
“So we increased quite a bit (from 23,000 annual visits in 2009). We’ll do a big jump on this one because there’s going to be things that have never been offered.”
The William Shore Memorial Pool District took ownership of the pool from the city of Port Angeles in 2009 after voters approved the new junior taxing district. City officials had considered closing the pool because of its age.
The expanded aquatic center will have a dedicated space for birthday parties and the Splash, Play and Active Recreation for Kids (SPARK) Squad after-school program.
“We’ll be able to house about 100 kids in our program,” Burke said.
“We get to teach 100 kids how to swim. That’s the whole goal.”
The pool is used by a swim club and the Port Angeles High School boys and girls swim teams, which moved to the Sequim YMCA for the 2019-2020 school year.
“The two entities that probably sacrificed the most is the swim club and the swim teams because we didn’t really have a good solution for them,” Burke said of the pool closure.
The pool at 225 E Fifth St. also is used by members of Coast Guard Air Station/Sector Field Office Port Angeles and patients from Olympic Medical Center, Burke said.
“It looks like we’ll actually have a physical therapist on site doing classes, and that will be part of the hospital partnership,” Burke said.
The new Shore Aquatic Center, shown Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2020, will feature a new entrance facing Lincoln Street in Port Angeles. (Keith Thorpe/Peninsula Daily News)
Burke displayed photographs of the construction during his 40-minute presentation.
Crews sprayed 70 cubic yards of shotcrete — sprayed concrete — to form the therapy pool in one day, Burke said.
The old pool basin was kept for the new aquatic center because “they build them exactly the same way,” Burke said.
The main entrance and locker rooms were moved from the east side of the building to the west. Much of the south side of the building will be covered by glass.
An average of 50 workers have been on site during construction, nearly all of whom live in Clallam County, Burke said. Neeley Construction of Puyallup is the primary contractor.
The pool will reopen in June with an estimated 80 employees. Most of those positions are part time.
“We’re the first job for a lot of kids, and so we get to teach them how to talk to a customer, how to answer the phone, how to take a message,” Burke said.
“Everybody leaves the pool,” he added. “If they don’t, we get to sit down and talk to them about their aspirations in life.”
Burke said the price of admission will remain low when the pool reopens — about $10 for a family to swim.
“We’re the cheapest entertainment in town,” Burke said.
“You can’t take your kids to a movie for 10 bucks. You can’t go bowling for 10 dollars.
“For me, if we price it so people can’t afford it, then we’ve kind of lost our whole mission statement,” Burke said.
Shore Aquatic Center is named for William “Bill” Shore, who taught thousands of Port Angeles children how to swim.
Burke said he spoke with members of the Shore family about the name change and invited them to the reopening in June.
“He was a high school swim coach and logger back in the ’50s,” Burke said.
“You couldn’t really do his technique for swim lessons anymore. Being a logger, his technique was throw them in, they’ll figure it out. We’re not really able to do that anymore.”
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
