City to partner for pool revamp
New conservancy for Barton Springs to help renovate bathhouse.
The city hopes to check off a big-ticket item in a 2008 plan for improving the Barton Springs Pool grounds and facilities in the next couple of years.
That plan called for moving the pool’s entrance to the glass rotunda that anchors the bathhouse, letting air and light into the “cramped and dank” women’s dressing area, reconfiguring the public restrooms and replacing classrooms with a visitors center that also could serve as an events venue.
On Monday, the city’s parks department and the recently formed Barton Springs Conservancy announced they are partnering to fund renovations at the bathhouse.
“This is a place we all love and we all treasure as a vital part of the city’s soul,” said Mike Cannatti, president of the Barton Springs Conservancy.
More than half a million people last year visited the chilly 3-acre pool in Zilker Park that is considered one of the crown jewels of Austin’s parks system.
The city has $2 million for the bathhouse from the 2012 voter-approved bond package. The conservancy aims to raise another $3 million over the next two to three years, Cannatti said.
“This is the way of the future for us, so that we can do these kind of things and not be a tax on the general fund, and put the money that we do get in the places where we’re not able to have the partnerships,” Parks Director Sara Hensley said.
The 2012 bond package also included $2.75 million for relocating the maintenance barn by Barton Springs and $2.5 million for general improvements, such as in the children’s play area by the pool, Assistant Parks Director Marty Stump said.
Stump said the goal is to have all these improvements completed by the end of 2018.
Part of the master plan’s vision would return the bathhouse, which was built in 1947, to the way it was.
Visitors originally bought tickets at the bathhouse’s rotunda, the master plan said, but the entrance later moved to the side of the bathhouse. Returning the entrance to its original location would bring more visibility to the exhibits in the Beverly S. Sheffield Education Center inside the bathhouse, Stump said.
The city has hired a consultant to do a feasibility study for bathhouse renovations and has six public meetings scheduled through Dec. 9.
Some frequent swimmers at Barton Springs Pool aren’t happy with the proposed changes, though.
Karen Kreps, who swims almost daily at the pool, said she’d rather the city spend the money cleaning Barton Springs after hours rather than closing the pool Thursdays to do so, or hiring an on-site swimming instructor. She doesn’t think airing her concerns at a public meeting would do much good.
“Unfortunately, there are a lot of my people who are becoming apathetic because it seems like an unstoppable behemoth,” Kreps said.
Dan Crow, another frequent swimmer who said he participated in more than 200 meetings about the Barton Springs master plan, is chafing at the role of the Barton Springs Conservancy.
“They have no business in this,” Crow said. “This is a city project.”
The conservancy has raised roughly $90,000 so far, some of which was a grant from the city, for startup costs, Cannatti said. The conservancy, which has applied for 501(c)(3) status and wants to eventually help with other projects, is operating under the Austin Parks Foundation’s “nonprofit umbrella,” Cannatti said.
The conservancy will launch a formal fundraising campaign kickoff once design of the bathhouse is complete, but people can donate now through the conservancy’s website, bartonspringsconservancy.org, Cannatti said. Stump said he anticipated design would be finished by the end of 2016.
The city has completed some smaller projects, such as new sod for the south lawn and a new stone path down to the pool.