Construction workers will break ground at the historic City Park Pool in Iowa City for a full remodel next year. 

Iowa City’s City Park Pool will be entirely replaced following the Iowa City City Council’s unanimous decision on the future of the pool facility Tuesday night.

Consultants for the project presented their findings of the pool’s conditions to the council Tuesday and said the facility is so damaged that replacement would be a better decision than repair. City Park Pool, located at 200 Park Road, opened in 1949 and cost $130,000 — equivalent to nearly $1.6 million in 2023. 

Andrew Caputo, a consultant from Williams Architects, said in their assessment of the pool, they found a variety of damages and leaks that led to the loss of around 55,000 gallons of water, or around five inches, of water lost from the pool each day.

These leaks have continued and even worsened despite annual repairs to try to amend them, he said.

In September 2022, over 800 Iowa City residents signed a petition asking for the city officials to reject a proposed design for City Park Pool that would reduce the nine 50-meter lap lanes to three, among other changes. 

In addition, there are also damages to the pool floor that pose health and safety concerns for citizens. The pool and its bathhouse are also not adequately accessible for handicapped individuals, Caputo said.

Ultimately, the condition of City Park Pool is at a point where it would make more financial sense for the city to correct its issues by replacement rather than repair, Caputo said.

“We have found that because of the condition of the pool, a repair project would look very much like a replacement project and be very, very costly in order to try to mitigate these issues,” Caputo said. 

Going with the replacement option rather than repair would also give the community a chance to weigh in on what the new and improved City Park Pool will look like, Caputo said.

Iowa City Director of Park and Recreation Juli Seydell Johnson said the next step in the replacement process for the pool is to start gathering public input. The first public input session will be held sometime this fall and will be followed by several other focus group sessions, she said.

The information gathered from these sessions will then be used to guide concept designs for the pool, Seydell Johnson said. Once a design is decided on and finalized, construction is slated to take place from August 2024 to Spring 2026, she said.

The estimated budget for the replacement project would be around $10 million, the consultants said.