TulsaPeople / July 2010 / Making waves

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Making waves

Thanks to three community-conscious residents, Sapulpa is home to its own public swimming pool for the first time since 1958.

Sapulpa has a public outdoor swimming pool this summer for the first time in more than half a century.

It is city-owned and city-operated. But it didn’t cost the city a penny — and it won’t require any city money or taxes in the future.

It is the product of some neighborhood conversations, which turned into a community-wide fund drive. That developed finances and plans for the pool, built in the city’s Liberty Park.

Sapulpa’s last public outdoor pool, which the WPA built during the Great Depression, closed in 1958. Since then the only swimming facilities were at the high school, whose indoor pool closed more than a dozen years ago, and at a Salvation Army facility.

Those just weren’t satisfactory, agreed neighbors Jan Allen, Guy Berry and Bruce Binion. They talked among themselves for years about the need for an outdoor pool where youngsters could go to swim and play in the summer.

Sapulpa, with a population of 27,000, was the largest city in Oklahoma without a public pool.

It was just talk until Binion, a real estate investor, developed a contact with a trustee of the Bartlett Foundation, an heir to the Bartlett-Collins Glass Co., once a major Sapulpa industry. The indication was that the foundation might be interested in a pool project.

Those three contacted John Waytula, Sapulpa’s 20-year parks director, who had long been interested in a pool but was aware of budget and tax constraints.

Those four went to the foundation, which agreed in 2007 to a $600,000 challenge grant. They had until June 2009 to raise the rest of the money, calculated to be $1.8 million.

Now, three years and almost $2 million later, the pool is complete. The grand opening was held May 29.

Another dozen or so community volunteers pitched in to help raise money. There were a couple more large contributions — $400,000 and $150,000, from anonymous donors — but it was largely a community effort.

Allen estimates that 500 individuals gave money. A variety of fundraising events were held and schoolchildren raised several thousand dollars in pennies. One couple, she says, “sends $10 every year, and we’re thrilled with that.”

A number of foundations contributed, but Berry, president of Sapulpa’s American Heritage Bank, says, “It is really a pretty popular project,” and about 85 percent of the money was raised locally.

The three original idea creators all have strong Sapulpa ties. Berry’s family has been involved in banking there since 1912. Binion owns apartments and downtown buildings. Allen, from Oklahoma City, moved to Sapulpa in 1980 when she married her husband, Sam, a lawyer whose family had lived in Sapulpa for generations.

Jan Allen is a swimmer — she says she grew up swimming in public-park pools in Oklahoma City and the lack of such a pool in Sapulpa “always kind of really bugged me.”

He and the Allens are next-door neighbors and Binion lives on the same block, so they talked frequently about the need for a pool.

The city agreed to have the pool built on an old and unused baseball field in Liberty Park, named for the Liberty Glass Co., which also was a major industry for years.

That saved the pool-builders the expense of land. And the park already had a paved parking lot and other amenities, such as playground equipment and picnic tables.

The goal from the start, Allen and Berry say, was to not obligate the city financially. Although the construction money is largely in hand, fundraising continues, with a goal to create a reserve fund to cushion the city against any future obligations.

“The kids around here deserve this,” Berry says. Sapulpa is “largely a blue-collar community, and a lot of kids are alone in the summer. This will be a real healthy outlet.”

Liberty Park is within easy walking or bicycling distance of many residents. And, Berry predicts, “the park will get better because of this.”

He also expects heavy use from nearby communities, such as Kiefer, Kellyville and Mounds.

Berry says the timing was right. Fundraising began and was mostly finished before the recession hit.

The city hired Planning Design Group of Tulsa to design the pool, which has lap-swim lanes, a large general pool area, a children’s section, slides and locker rooms. It should be superior to most comparable facilities. JP Construction built the pool and D.C. Bass and Sons Construction created the associated buildings.

While the city owns and operates the pool, the fundraisers say they hope it will be financially self-sustaining. Plans are to charge a small admission fee and to charge for swimming lessons, potentially generating enough to pay lifeguards and other expenses.

Waytula is overseeing construction and will supervise operations, including the budget and all equipment.
And the effort isn’t over: “We still need money,” Allen and Berry agree.

But if opening-weekend results are any indication, success seems imminent: The pool drew more than 800 paying customers its first day and has run 600 to 700 a day since. Swim classes are also full.