Is Olympia getting a new pool? Here’s an update on plans for a regional facility
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- County, Olympia and Evergreen staff meet to keep college pool open.
- Staff consider forming a second public facilities district to seek funding.
- Staff eye a voter sales-tax measure pending multi-jurisdiction agreement.
Thurston County officials convened a meeting with staff from the City of Olympia, Evergreen State College and other local partners on Wednesday to discuss the community’s pleas to keep the college’s swimming pool open, and how to make a regional aquatics facility come to fruition.
Olympia Parks Director Sylvana Niehuser told The Olympian on April 2 that city and county managers, as well as Olympia School District Superintendent Patrick Murphy and Evergreen President John Carmichael met to discuss how it would cost several million dollars to keep the college’s pool running and maintained properly. And the money just isn’t there right now to make that happen. Niehuser said this fact reignited talks of coming together to bring a regional aquatics facility to the county.
The last time The Olympian reported on plans to bring a regional aquatics facility to Thurston County was in March 2023, when no stakeholders, including the cities of Lacey and Tumwater, came forward with an interest in supporting the project. The City of Olympia had to go it alone.
According to previous reporting from The Olympian, the Evergreen State College and the OSD had expressed interest in exploring a partnership with Olympia after the city lost its other partners.
Niehuser said once the city completed its feasibility study for the aquatics center in 2022, staff wanted to work on a funding measure to split the cost between partners. A price tag for constructing an aquatics center hasn’t been identified yet, but building operations were estimated in 2021 to cost $2,326,001.
Niehuser told The Olympian that the cost of construction will vary depending on several factors, including site characteristics, environmental review outcomes, transportation and utility requirements and the facility’s design features.
“Given that the competitive pool at Evergreen is closing, I anticipate we will also want to explore potential modifications to the conceptual designs that were in the feasibility study as part of this process,” she said.
She said there was bipartisan support at the time to develop legislation for a second public facilities district for the project. A bill was passed in the 2023 Washington State Legislature that allows at least three contiguous cities with a combined population of at least 160,000 that previously formed a PFD to create a second PFD before July 1, 2026.
There is currently the Capital Area Regional Public Facilities District that is shared between Olympia, Lacey, Tumwater and Thurston County. According to the City of Lacey’s website, the district is authorized to receive 0.033% of the state share of sales and use tax generated in the four jurisdictions. The funds help support Lacey’s Regional Athletic Complex and Olympia’s Hands on Children’s Museum.
Niehuser said partners would have to go to the voters for the potential increase in sales tax to support a regional aquatics center.
When Olympia’s partners pulled out of the plan, she said, there was no direction from elected bodies to find a way forward.
“For that sort of thing, it’s definitely something that you would need all of the entities to be on board with, because you have to sign in, or you have to come to a local agreement, and there’s a lot of work that has to be done around the planning of that,” Niehuser said.
Fast-forward to 2025, Niehuser said the deadline of July 2026 to form that local agreement was coming up, and it didn’t feel like the right time to try and move the plan forward, given the state of the economy.
“Plus, I didn’t think that we would have enough time to have the conversations and get an agreement in place between multiple jurisdictions,” she said.
Niehuser said she worked with the city’s lobbyist team and now-Tumwater City Administrator Paul Simmons, as well as state Sen. Jessica Bateman and representatives Lisa Parshley and Beth Doglio to have the date removed from the PFD legislation. That was approved by Gov. Bob Ferguson in March, and Niehuser said now there is no deadline for the jurisdictions to potentially come together to form a second public facilities district.
She said conversations are continuing to happen around funding the construction of a regional aquatics facility. She said staff are looking to schedule a meeting sometime in May with the cities and county to discuss forming a second public facilities district and going to the voters to approve a sales tax increase to fund the project.
Niehuser said she thinks it’s important that people know that a regional aquatic center would have a diverse offering, rather than a single pool. She said the community has expressed a wide array of needs and desires.
According to previous reporting from The Olympian, the city set aside money in 2018 for an aquatic facility feasibility study. The study included two options for the physical layout of a future aquatic facility, both of which featured large indoor spaces with classrooms and party rooms, a lazy river, lap pools and other entertainment features.
At the same time, Niehuser said the closure of Evergreen’s competition pool could change the outcome of what gets built.
In terms of timeline, Niehuser said once the funding is secured and a site is selected, the planning, permitting and engineered design would likely take about three years, followed by two years of construction. She said the most uncertain element is the timeframe for reaching an interlocal agreement with partner agencies and securing funding.
“This will depend on policy direction and decisions made by our elected officials, along with community input, as it represents a significant investment,” she said.
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