FAYETTEVILLE — The second phase of a face-lift for Wilson Park Pool is about to get under way.
Last year, the city paid to seal cracks on the pool surface and replace the pool deck.
Later this month, Pick-It Construction of Fayetteville will begin renovating the pool’s bath house, concessions building and pump house. The buildings’ last major work came in 1983.
“It’s time,” Carole Jones, a parks planner, said.
At A Glance
Wilson Park Pool
According to research by Jerry Hogan, Fayetteville historian, a man named A.L. Trent owned Wilson Park as early as 1906. In March 1926, a group of investors, including Noah Drake, purchased the property. They opened a swimming pool the following year. The park was sold to the city for $16,000 in 1944, and the Wilson Park site has been as a public pool ever since.
Source: Washington County Historical Society
Jones said bathrooms will be redesigned, showers will be rearranged with individual stalls rather than communal areas and the office where pool staff work will be completely redone. A new entryway will be shaped like a fish tail and the pool house’s roof will look like scales, according to designs by Crafton Tull and Associates. Exterior work on the concessions and pump house buildings is planned.
Added to $277,000 in repairs last year, the city’s $404,000 contract with Pick-It brings total construction cost during the past two years to $681,000 — a signal that city officials are not planning to invest in another swimming pool in the near future.
“We’re planning to keep Wilson Park as our city swimming pool,” Connie Edmonston, Parks and Recreation director, said. Long-range plans for a regional park off Cato Springs Road in southwest Fayetteville list some kind of aquatic feature or “splash pad” for children, but no pool is identified.
Voters will decide Nov. 12 whether to commit up to $3.5 million in hotel, motel and restaurant tax proceeds for soccer fields, baseball diamonds and related facilities at the regional park, an estimated $27.7 million project.
The Wilson Park Pool welcomed more than 20,000 visitors in the eight weeks it was open last summer, according to city records.
The pool opened to the public for the first time May 1, 1927, according to research by Jerry Hogan, a Fayetteville historian. Wilson Park used to be privately owned, first by a man named A.L. Trent and then by Noah Drake, the namesake for Fayetteville’s executive airport. Drake sold the park to the city for $16,000 in 1944, according to newspaper reports at the time. Before a pool was built, a pond on the property, known as Trent’s Pond, was a popular swimming hole.
Renovations should take about six months to complete, Jones said. The project is being paid for out of the Parks and Recreation Department’s capital improvement fund. Money for the work came from fees on development in southwest Fayetteville, including several large apartment complexes.