The project to rebuild the historic Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool continues to gain steam, with a public meeting taking place over the weekend to continue to discuss details.
The Facebook page “Rebuild Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool” posted on Sunday that “the general tone was supportive” at a community meeting Saturday, and noted that the meeting continued to nail down some details through discussions of the facility’s shape and types of building materials.
The full Facebook update is here.
The pool, which formerly hosted big-time national meets like NCAAs, Pac-12s and the 1968 and 1976 Olympic Trials, was shut down after years of use, but a campaign is now underway to rebuild the pool to its former glory.
The city of Long Beach first approved the rebuild project back in early 2013. About a year ago, we reported that the rebuild plans would include a separate diving well, one of the major pieces the old facility didn’t have.
The approved budget is now north of $100 million, and the new facility should include the following, per a report from last October:
The pool will feature:
- an indoor 50-meter pool
- an outdoor 50-meter pool
- a separate indoor diving well
- 1,250 seats (for an extra $4.7 million on top of the proposed 650-seat plan)
- separate teaching, recreation, and therapy pools
- a movable floor on the indoor pool to accommodate different uses.
Demolition on the old facility wrapped up earlier this year; you can watch a time-lapse of that process here.\
The city is taking a community survey, which you can find here.
Cool. I think. If this makes sense financially.
I swam at this pool eons ago. Fond memories – you could finish up your events for the day and run a very short distance to the beach!
Many other meets as well, I’m sure, but the Short Course National Championships should be included in the cited list (1969, in the era of the AAU)
Any idea if both the indoor and outdoor LCM pools will be “competition strength?”. Could we envision hosting an LCM meet running in both courses with remaining pools used for warm-up?