PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Rotary Club heard Tuesday from a supporter and an opponent of a proposed aquatic recreation center in the Kah Tai Lagoon Nature Park.
Make Waves! proposes a $10 million aquatic center to support more than 2,000 swimmers who want a new public pool, and to provide other types of recreation.
It has a proposed site adjacent to the Kah Tai Lagoon in the park and Jefferson Transit’s Haines Place Park and Ride on 12th Street.
“Our mission is to develop a multipurpose aquatic recreation and fitness center that is affordable and financially sustainable, that will serve the needs of all members of the community for generations to come,” David Hero, vice president of the Making Waves! organization, told about 50 people at the meeting.
Project opponent Richard Jahnke said that the plan would interfere with the park.
“We created this park with federal and community support under certain conditions, that it would not be developed,” Jahnke said.
“To build that center will violate those conditions.”
The proposal formed in response to the deterioration of the local public pool, which is in the former Mountain View Elementary School on Blaine Street.
Hero said the only way to rehabilitate the pool is to tear down the building and rebuild a new pool, which would cost about $17 million.
“We can raise the $10 million needed to build a facility, but I don’t think we could raise $17 million,” Hero said.
Hero said the proposed 40,000-square-foot facility, which is slated for a site in the corner of the park, will not interfere with wildlife or the park’s ecological balance, and that it does not encroach on the 200-foot buffer zone that protects the lagoon.
“Its footprint represents less than 2 percent of the total park area,” he said.
Plans include an eight-lane, 25-meter pool that conforms to international standards; an indoor track for walker, joggers and baby strollers; a therapy pool; multipurpose room; basketball court; aerobics-yoga room; Jacuzzi; sauna; climbing wall and rooms for cardio-training and muscle-resistance equipment.
In response to a question about competition with local gyms, Hero said the facilities could work together toward a goal of community health.
“We will focus on recreation while a gym is more concerned with fitness,” he said.
“We can each refer people to the other’s programs.”
Jahnke, however, would like to see Make Waves! in another location.
Jahnke said the 1980s, when the land was first turned into a park, was “a dynamic time.”
“There was a period when we saw wetlands as useless places that should be filled in,” he said.
“The reversal of that attitude led to increased conservation and more attention to protecting land, and this land needs to be protected.”
In May, Port of Port Townsend Deputy Director Jim Pivarnik said the port was working on a conservation agreement with Jefferson Land Trust and the city of Port Townsend that would protect much of the 20-acre park around the proposed aquatic facility.
Pivarnik estimated then that completion of the agreement could take until November.
The proposed conservation agreement is in response to members of Admiralty Audubon of East Jefferson County who were concerned that the aquatic center could open the door to encroachment on the nature park.
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Jefferson County Reporter Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or charlie.bermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
