By Linda Taaffe
The Los Altos City Council decided last week to move forward with a three-pool swimming complex at Rosita Park that would be 12,000 square feet smaller than the proposal recommended by city staff and 15,000 square feet larger than the former pool area at Covington School.
The proposed plan for the Los Altos Community Aquatic Center
includes a 25-meter-by-25-yard competition-sized pool, a recreational pool, a wading pool and a locker room spread out over a 32,000-square-foot area adjacent to the former St. William’s Parish Hall on Rosita Avenue. The pool layout would mean removing the two tennis courts currently at the site. If the pending environmental study shows that the pool will not have a negative impact at that site and the council approves the project, pool construction could begin as early as next summer.
The city swapped a 26,000-square-foot portion of land at its municipal center with the Los Altos School District in exchange for an equal portion of land at the Covington mini park near Rosita intended for a new swimming pool. The school district demolished the former community pool earlier this year as part of a massive renovation project at Covington School. SPLASH, a nonprofit group of local swimmers, will fund the $3 million estimated to construct the new pool complex.
Neighborhood concerns over potential traffic, noise and lighting resulted in a set of alternative plans that pushed the entire complex closer to residential homes on Rosita Avenue and covered 47,000 square feet of space, or an area 1.3 times larger than the initial proposal. City staff said the larger layout was intended to mitigate neighbor concerns by placing a 126-foot-long locker room along Rosita Avenue to create a noise and light buffer and discourage traffic from driving the full length of the dead-end street.
The approved conceptual plan leaves the pool sizes intact, but reduces of the deck space surrounding the three pools. The plan will encroach into the Rosita property by about 42 feet.
Councilman John Moss referred to the alternative plans as “creeping elegance… the consequence has gotten way to big and eats up most of the parking. Los Altos without a community pool, isn’t really a community. We need to go back to something a lot simpler,” he said.
The proposed complex designs drew a standing-room-only crowd at last week’s council meeting, where about 27 residents voiced their concerns to the council.
Size, rather than the concept of a community pool, seemed to be the biggest concern among those opposing the complex.
“I don’t doubt the value of having a swimming pool. That’s pretty much understood,” said resident Ann Testa. “Somehow the proposal has become a regional facility … inconsistent with the expectations of the Los Altos community.” A three-pool complex doesn’t belong at the end of a dead-end residential street, residents said.
Some neighbors asked the council to table the pool until after the effects of Covington School’s reopening are known. The Los Altos School District plans to re-open the Covington campus next year as well as a child care center, both which are adjacent to the pool area.
“I think a pool is a great thing for the community… but the city needs to demonstrate that it can handle the problems it has today,” said resident Kurt Ayers, referring to the city’s current traffic congestion. “When Covington opens, it’s only going to get worse. This has to be resolved now. This amenity is a distant third compared to neighborhood safety and traffic issues.”
A group of Rosita Neighbors calling themselves the Rosita Community Pool Coalition estimated that the pool complex would create a 400-600 percent increase in traffic each day along Rosita based on the pool’s revenue projections. In order to generate the revenues needed to operate the complex, the pool would need to draw a certain level of swimmers, which translates into more cars, according to the coalition.
Those supporting the pool urged the council to move forward with on the project, emphasizing the void that the closure of Covington Pool has created for the many Los Altos swimming families who are finding that swim lesson programs and youth and adult swim teams in neighboring
cities that have very little capacity to absorb the swimmers displaced from Covington Pool. One resident argued that the pool is not about one neighborhood, but about the entire community.
SPLASH member Kathy Englar said while the complex will be larger, the daily schedule should be similar to Covington’s pool. She said the new complex would generate less the twice the amount that Covington had generated.
Councilman Francis La Poll said he anticipated the traffic situation to be comparable to when St. Joseph’s School and Covington were both open.
The council established an aquatics center sub-committee to further study the project.
