I plan to enjoy this facility with a lot of other Moscow residents who
spent last summer going to Pullman or local lakes to swim. I will splash
in the fountains, slide on the slides, and practice my flip turns between
the lane lines. I will do all of this at the side of many other Moscow and
non-Moscow residents who will appreciate the work by many indivuals to put
that pool there. In the winter, I will head back to the UI Swim Center and
"cruise the black line" on my lunch hour.
And who knows, maybe after a few years of the community enjoying our new
aquatic center, the city and the school district will see a need to augment
that pool with an indoor pool, or maybe a gymnasium on the free ground
adjacent to our new pool. A second phase is always possible as long as
there is a first.
I swim a lot in Moscow's Indoor Pool at the UI. While it is often crowded
when I am there during lap swim, I continue to see empty or underused pool
space at other times. I see groups from various area schools that come and
use the pool for lessons, sometimes from Moscow's public schools. I
suspect that in 10 years or so, we may see a need for another indoor pool
in Moscow to meet the needs of a growing population and interest in the
sport. But that time has not yet come. However, the time has arrived for
us to replace our old outdoor pool, and thankfully we have a solid plan to
do just that.
This community, like many others, has spent millions of dollars on seasonal
recreational facilities that have various use limitations due to weather.
I guess we do so because we need to celebrate that bit of weather that
keeps us here during the other seven, eight or nine months of the year (and
not because we expect a dollar return on our investment).
Our soccer fields are too wet to use for many months, our tennis courts too
full of snow, and so on. But I am thankful that we as the Palouse
community had the vision to build the Bill Chipman Palouse Trail, and I am
hopeful that visionaries in the City of Pullman will build their ice
skating rink, even though weather limits activities on both of these
projects to some extent.
I look forward to standing at the new barbeque grills at Moscow's new pool
beaming with pride that we built one more visionary community element. And
I will do so with other visionaries planning on how we are going to work
toward completing our next project.
Tom Lamar