City Unveils Its Latest Version of the New Belmont Pool

By John Donegan
THIS RENDERING shows the latest plans for the Belmont Pool complex, which city officials detailed at a community meeting on Jan. 22.

Following a decade of delays and revisions, city officials on Wednesday unveiled the latest rendering for their municipal aquatics center on the beach.

Officials at the meeting – held inside the auditorium at Will Rogers Middle School – answered questions, gathered input and objections, and provided updates on the Belmont Pool project. Architectural renderings were also available for viewing.

According to engineers behind the project, the site will have two pools – one at regulation size and the other a shallow pond for toddlers – as well as a community center, splash zone and equipment room.

Diving boards and a bulkhead will allow for classes to coincide with free swimming, while the pool’s depth – eight feet end to end – could accommodate water polo matches.

The community center, in the shape of butterfly wings, will offer typical amenities including showers, lockers and changing rooms, as well as space for offices and concessions. Bleachers capable of seating 540 spectators and additional restrooms are among the changes still being considered, officials said.

Few hurdles remain in the way of approvals, said project designer Dino D’Emilia. “Otherwise all the other entitlements and actions for the project have been achieved,” he added.

Bids could go to contractors by June with hopes that construction will begin this fall, officials said.

The project is a simpler facelift from the former Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool, which was demolished in 2014 after officials determined seismic issues had made it unsafe.

The new plan is also well short of what was first proposed.

What began in 2016 as a bold expanse of concrete and landscaping – a $119 million domed natatorium capable of hosting 2028 Olympic competitions – has steadily been retrenched by rising costs and regulations.

Legal challenges from community groups, declining oil revenues and changes mandated by the California Coastal Commission, which has jurisdiction over coastal projects, further ensnared the process and hiked the cost.

The City Council downsized the project in October 2023 to a $75 million facility that included three pools, zip lines and climbing walls.

But with the passage of Senate Bill 1137, which bans drilling near schools, parks and hospitals — and took a significant chunk out of the city’s budget — officials scrapped the project for a smaller design that D’Emilia said will save Long Beach about $50 million. More than half of the city’s derricks are within the state-required, 3,200-foot buffers.

The city’s legal and financial team has since assembled a slew of options for raising revenue, from the newly announced “Long Beach Bowl” to a renaissance of aerospace start-ups around the airport. None, however, can be put into place quickly enough to cover the pool’s looming expenses.

Without an exact estimate on hand, Charlene Angusco with Long Beach’s Tidelands Improvement Division said the city has already spent $22 million on the project, to include the cost of demolition, design and environmental studies.

Officials assured the newest design, submitted to the Coastal Commission last February, is nearly hammered out. And while it’s nothing like what they originally had envisioned, D’Emilia said it saves “some semblance of all the programming that we had hoped to have in the project.”

“Obviously, with the exception of a separate platform diving component, we just don’t have the funds to build that,” D’Emilia said. “But otherwise, I think all of the primary elements are there.”

Editor Note: This article was originally published online on Jan. 19 by the Long Beach Post, a non-profit news organization. Contribute to see more stories like this at www.lbpost.com.

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