Palatine Park District recommends closing Willow Pool

The swimmers, sunbathers and socializers who for the past 47 years have enjoyed Willow Pool on Palatine’s east side may be losing their neighborhood fixture.

Citing age, size, cost, declining attendance and the fact there are several larger pools around town, Palatine Park District staff is recommending Willow’s demolition after the summer swim season.

“The Park District can accommodate its current and future bathing demand at its three other pool sites,” Executive Director Ron Gbur wrote in a board memo.

Maximizing usage at those sites would most efficiently serve the majority of taxpayers, he added.

But many neighbors don’t agree with that assessment and are speaking out against the idea, which will be discussed at the April 26 park district board meeting and likely put to a vote May 10.

Willow Wood resident Mike Henning, whose wife and three children are pool staples, said he’s primarily concerned for kids’ safety since they’ll have to cross Hicks Road to get to another pool.

The park district runs the Family Aquatic Center, located nine blocks away from Willow Pool in downtown Palatine, Eagle Pool to the north and Birchwood Pool to the south.

Henning downplays the park district staff’s conclusion that up to $21,000 is needed to bring the pool into “reasonably efficient” operating condition. The district, he noted, recently approved $35,000 for jerseys and is spending millions on the golf course and Eagle Pool’s renovation.

“It’s a usable pool that requires reasonable maintenance,” Henning said. “That’s not a catastrophic situation.”

He thinks it’s a viable solution to keep the pool open a few more years and then possibly reconfigure it, but wonders why residents haven’t been asked for their input.

This isn’t the first time Willow Pool has been a target.

The park district recommended closing it in 1983 and again in 1993, but the board relented after public outcry. Officials say the pool was built by the subdivision developer and absorbed by the park district in 1994 when there was just one pool in the village.

Park District Board President Sue Gould said she hasn’t yet made up her mind on the issue, and has requested a financial breakdown of costs for maintenance, staffing and the construction of a new, basic pool.

She said Willow Pool — by far the smallest of the district’s four — is “obsolete in today’s standards” and plagued with multiple mechanical problems.

Rehabbing it would be pointless because of the modern codes it would have to meet, she said, so it would have to be torn down and built from scratch. Village code also would require a parking lot for at least 30 cars, but there’s no space in the park.

Attendance at the pool has fallen from more than 11,000 in 1999 to 6,200 last summer. And Gould said records show plenty of people from east of Hicks Road are using the three other pools.

“I understand their concerns, but it’s been Band-Aided together and just isn’t up to the standards of our other parks,” Gould said.