East Palestine council makes decision to shutter village pool for 2025 season
EAST PALESTINE — The pool at East Palestine City Park will not open in 2025, village council decided during a regular meeting on Monday.
Citing “safety concerns,” council unanimously passed a motion to close the pool this season, as a broken heater created problems and park renovations continue to lag.
The renovations are part of a $25 million project to revamp the park — paid for by Norfolk Southern as part of the railroad’s “making it right” campaign in the wake of the 2023 train derailment. When presenting project plans both Norfolk Southern and Michael Baker International — the design firm hired to manage the project — repeatedly gave assurances no interruption in the use of the park would occur with the implementation of a segmented timeline that would see renovations take place over a eight-phase period.
As the project fell behind schedule, those assurances fell to the wayside.
“For those of you who didn’t join us for the Park Committee meeting, we discussed the opening of the pool for this season and the safety concerns involved this season with the current pool situation,” Park Chair Jessica Rocco said. “The park renovations are not on target for their dates so we are going to reach out to Michael Baker and ask for some advice moving forward potentially looking at closing the park to speed up the process and the renovations, but we don’t have any insight as far as that goes right now.”
Ground on the project was broken on July 13 and Phase 1 began just after with expectations that phase would be complete by the second quarter of last year with Phase 8 complete by the end of 2027. Months into construction, Phase 1 is still ongoing and plans for Phase 2, which was already projected to be well under construction, still need to receive state approval.
“The pool plans will be submitted to the state health department with what we hope are final comments and corrections this week,” acting village manager Misti Martin said. “As far as the bids are concerned, they have already bid out Phase 2; however, instead of moving forward with those bids and having to do change orders with the adjustments required by the health department, once they have final approval plans they will send those changes out and then the contractors will make corrections to the current bids and then the contracts will be awarded.”
The delay of Phase 2 proved to be the most problematic, as the second stage included the construction of a new aquatic center that was to be open in time for the 2025 season and replace the old pool. At the end of the summer, council began mulling over the idea of keeping the old pool operational in 2025 as it became increasingly evident that the new pool would not be built in time. However, the heater at that pool stopped working in 2024. In order to open the old pool, a new heater that would only be used for one season would have to be purchased at the cost of thousands of dollars. The heater issue coupled with the amount of construction that would still be underway at the park ultimately led to Monday’s decision to shutter the pool in 2025.
Aside from the new pool, which will include a zero-entry swimming pool with a splash pad and a new pool house, other notable changes to the park under the project plans include new modern playgrounds, upgraded baseball fields, a new amphitheater with an electrified stage, improvements to the brick pavilion, dog park, community center, enhanced parking lots and improved traffic flow, general upgrades to facilities and walkways and new basketball, pickleball and tennis courts.
The relocation of the sports courts also proved problematic. The courts were to be constructed in Phase 1, but with that phase behind schedule, the East Palestine boys tennis team was left scrambling to find a new location to hold matches this season — another wrinkle that Michael Baker and village council said would not happen. East Palestine Tennis Coach Ashley Murphy sought and received confirmation last year that the courts would be ready to go for her team’s use in 2025. She was told the renovations would have no impact on her team’s ability to hold matches there. Her team was uprooted last season as the school district decided to move tennis while sampling was conducted at the park.
The renovations were also supposed to have little to no impact on the use of the park in general. Norfolk Southern said the railroad is still hoping the project progresses with minimal effect.
“We continue to work with the village to complete important park revitalization work with as little impact to park activities as possible. Where that is not possible, due to weather or other circumstances, we are working to support alternative scheduling options,” the railroad said. “Work is being completed in several phases. Phase one is currently already underway and we are reviewing contractors for work on phase two, which will include the pool and pool house areas.”
While Norfolk Southern is still optimistic that most activities at the park will not be interrupted, Rocco said the construction around the property and safety of park visitors must be weighed.
“It was nice to see with the snow that there were kids over there sledding still making use of the park. I’ve been over there and there are still people walking and enjoying that,” she said. “It’s nice to see that but as the renovations continue, safety is going to become an issue and we want to take that into consideration.”
selverd@mojonews.com