No swimming at Thacher
Plans scrapped for new pool



NEW SCOTLAND — The half-century-old bathhouse for Thacher Park’s Olympic-sized pool was demolished last week with no immediate plans for replacement.

The pool is empty, awaiting demolition, too. It has been closed for two summers.

A year-and-a-half ago, with much fanfare, the state’s Office of Parks, Recreation and Historical Preservation announced that Thacher Park would be the first state park in New York to get a waterslide.
In March of 2006, the state announced a $3 million project to completely renovate the pool complex at John Boyd Thacher Park in the Helderbergs. The old pool was to be replaced with a smaller 7,050-square-foot "leisure pool," featuring an "interactive water play structure," a free swim area, and a large looping water slide, the parks office said.

A 2,860-square-foot spray pad, with shallow water and spray for children to play in, was to be installed in the shell of the old pool. The project was also to have included a new bathhouse and landscaping. Half of the price was to have been covered by a grant from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund.
"It’s just to compete with some of the newer facilities in the area," said Cathy Jiminez 18 months ago; she was a state parks spokeswoman at the time.
This week, Eileen Larrabee, currently a spokeswoman for the parks office, said there is "no exact plan" beyond demolition for the Thacher Park pool and no timetable for building another one.
Alluding to the exit of Governor George Pataki and the election of Eliot Spitzer, Larrabee said, "Once the previous administration made its announcement"not much else happened. When the new administration took over and looked at the needs of various parks," she said, the initial plan didn’t look feasible.
"There were issues with the existing structure," said Larrabee, so the decision was made to "move ahead with demolition." She said, "The existing pool could not function."

Chris Fallon, who has been the manager at Thacher Park for eight years, said that the pool and the Indian Ladder Trail had been the two big attractions at the park.
"It certainly was beautiful. It had its heyday," he said of the Olympic-sized pool. But, he went on, the pool had become unsafe.
"It was the general consensus of the engineers"that it could not be repaired and was not safe to operate," said Fallon.
Asked why the pool complex was closed for two seasons if it was not ripped out until now, Fallon said, "There was a whole series of different contract issues."

Throughout the summer, he said, people have called to ask when the pool will open. Some were surprised to hear it was closed for the season and others expressed disappointment, he said.
"It’s not going to stay demolished and a hole in the ground," Fallon concluded. "The park needs an attraction of some sort. I’m just not sure what it will be."

The Olympic-sized pool had been the big summer draw and was used by children in nearby towns for swimming lessons. Generations of Hilltown residents worked there — as ticket-takers, in the concession stand, in the locker rooms, or as lifeguards.
Michael Vincent, who lives just six miles down Route 443 from the pool, said, "I’ve been going there since I was 10 years old."

He learned to swim in the old pool and spent a good part of his adult life as a maintenance supervisor at the park, retiring four years ago; he now works at Thacher part-time.

Vincent has been watching the demolition over the last week. The bathhouse is now completely down, he said, and the large sand filters have been removed from the drained pool.
He reminisced this week over the old Olympic-sized pool, which had a "real deep end," not the "zero-entrance," like a ramp, that most modern pools have. The old pool had a high dive flanked by two low diving boards at its deep end.
"That was always a favorite," Vincent said of the high dive; jumping off of it became a rite of passage for area youth.

The pool held 675,000 gallons of water, said Vincent, which came from nearby Thompson’s Lake.
The water wasn’t heated. "The joke used to be, if you put an ice cube in it, it would last all day," said Vincent.

The biggest problem with the concrete pool in its later years, Vincent said, was, because of the concrete rotting, the pool lost several thousand gallons a day.

He referred to various locals who had worked at the pool or, like himself, learned to swim there, and of a scrapbook documenting its half-century of history.
"A lot of people miss it," said Vincent. "It was part of the attraction of Thacher. Large groups would come to have their picnics and then go swimming."
"It’s discouraging," said Larrabee, the state parks spokeswoman, of the failed plans for rebuilding. "I know people must be disappointed."