I wrote earlier this week about Wake Forest's first sprayground opening for its first full season this month. But the town is working on another big water-related project too - a massive remaking of its Holding Park Pool complex.
The project, forced by major leaks in the original 75-year-old pool, started about a year ago. As I wrote last year, while repairing a leak in the existing pool in 2016, contractors found major issues related to the integrity of the pool walls, shutting it down for both the 2016 and 2017 seasons. The pool hadn't seen major renovations for 40 years, according to town officials.
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"The pool was at a point where it was time to replace it," Ruben Wall, the town's parks director, told me at the time.
Three pools under construction
The town's board of commissioners approved plans for the $2.5 million replacement in October 2016. And it's big.
The complex will have three separate bodies of water when it opens:
- a six-lane, 25-meter lap pool;
- a children's pool with a small slide and other play pieces; and
- a third pool with two 20-foot-tall water slides - one open and the other enclosed.
Cold winter forces delayed opening
Wall had hoped to open the pool in May, but this year's long, cold winter has set the project back. Wall said this week that he hopes to open the pool by the end of June or very first of July.
"That's the plan," he said. "We're working very hard. ... Because we may be delayed with opening the pool, we may extend the season and go into the middle of September to try to accommodate for that."
Crews starting building the water slides over the weekend.
"It's starting to look like a real water park," Wall said.
Take a look ...
