Mattocks pool, pool building to be leveled
Town hall planned for community feedback on replacement proposals
Over the past two months, the El Dorado Parks and Playgrounds Commission has held a series of meetings — regular and special — to determine the next steps of an improvement plan for city parks, including the fate of the Mattocks Park swimming pool.
Within the past three weeks, the commission has voted to decommission and raze the Mattocks Park pool and pool house; successfully presented a funding request for the purchase of equipment for Lions Club Municipal Golf Course and BBQ grills for several city parks; and gained new perspective on how to get a better handle on the status of outstanding improvement projects for which funding has already been approved.
Mattocks Park swimming pool
For nearly 70 years, Mattocks Park has anchored the neighborhood that is informally known as “New Addition”.
Its outdoor swimming pool has been a popular gathering spot, providing the entire community with an opportunity to take a cool dip to escape sweltering, south Arkansas summer temperatures.
Now, that seven-decade-old tradition is coming to an end and the EPPC is looking to work with the community to begin a new chapter in Mattocks Park’s history.
On Oct. 14, commissioners voted to remove the city’s only public swimming pool, which has been closed for two successive summers, citing public health and safety concerns.
The pool opened shortly after the land for Mattocks Park was donated to the city by late El Dorado resident Cornelia Mattocks.
Mattocks approached the El Dorado City Council, first in May 1952 and again in March 1953, and gifted to the city property deeds for 15-plus acres of land in the area of Detroit and Sharp streets.
With Mattocks’s gift came terms, specifying that the land “be developed … as a public park and playground for members of the Negro race.”
The park was to be named Mattocks Memorial Park in honor of her late husband, P.R. Mattocks, and it was to be “perpetually maintained by the City of El Dorado, its successors or assigns.”
For the next several decades, residents in New Addition and other neighborhoods around the city flocked to the Mattocks Park pool to swim, splash and play in a small, kiddie pool and the larger, existing pool.
At one point, bleachers were set up outside the fenced-in pool, offering a convenient seating area for casual observers and parents, guardians and neighborhood residents who watched over youngsters who were in the pool and the park.
The smaller pool was eventually closed and filled in and the bleachers were removed.
Volunteers
Over the years, several groups have volunteered to work with the city to keep the pool open each summer.
Chemtura/LANXESS chemical corporation has partnered with the city of El Dorado to donate patio furniture and the chemicals that are necessary to operate the pool each year.
The company and other groups have also hosted events, including back-to-school pizza parties, at the pool.
In the early 1990s, local artists spruced up the pool house with a fresh coat of paint and designs that included colorful flowers as a motif.
Several community groups have worked over the past 15-plus years to operate and manage the Mattocks Park pool, which typically opens on Memorial Day and closes a couple of weeks before the start of school each year.
One of those groups, headed up by the Rev. Ray Johnson, former city sanitation supervisor, convinced the city council to institute a free-admission policy in 2007 to help encourage more children, who may not have been able to afford an admission fee, to use the pool.
The Boys and Girls Club of El Dorado, whose Weatherington Unit is near Mattocks Park, has taken groups of children to the the pool in the summer to take advantage of free swims.
Johnson volunteered to continue overseeing the operation and management of the pool following his retirement from the city in 2018.
Condition of the pool Attendance for the Mattocks Park pool has reportedly waned in recent years and its condition has continued deteriorate.
In March, Robert Edmonds, El Dorado director of public works, acknowledged that with the exception of patching up cracks and leaks in the pool itself and some painting of the pool house, the city has not upgraded or performed any major repairs or improvements on the pool in nearly seven decades.
Edmonds made the comments as the EPPC toured the facility during an inspection with officials from the Arkansas Department of Health to determine if the pool could be readied for opening this year.
The pool has been closed for two years due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) in 2020 and its poor condition this year.
ADH officials in March pointed to several problems with the pool, ranging from minor improvements — such as adding handrails to the entrance of the shallow end of the pool — to more extensive repairs to the operating and mechanical system and pool house that are needed to comply with state codes
Parks and playgrounds commissioners and Edmonds initially considered short-term fixes in order to bring the pool up to state codes and open it for the summer of 2021.
However, the EPPC was unable to get a viable plan together by the traditional Memorial Day opening for the pool and in the following weeks.
Additionally, commissioners experienced difficulty finding a commercial swimming-pool contractor or service provider to evaluate the pool and make recommendations for repairs, upgrades and improvements.
Conceptual design
In July, commissioners got their first look at a conceptual design for a new and improved swimming pool at Mattocks Park, complete with a splash pad and a modernized, multi-functional, open-air pool house that comes with a concession stand, restrooms, changing rooms and a locker area.
The city reached out to local architectural firm MR Designs, LLC, and Michael Rogers, founder of the MR Designs, presented the conceptual design, along with a preliminary estimate of $700,000, during an EPPC regular meeting July 27.
Preliminary construction costs totaled $650,000.
An additional $50,000 would go toward design fees ($45,500) and miscellaneous design and bid expenses, including a geo-technical survey, abatement, environmental remediation and bid advertising ($4,500).
In the weeks that ensued, parks and playgrounds commissioners discussed the matter at length and tossed around several ideas.
They finally agreed to raze the existing pool and pool house and they settled on three options with which to potentially replace the facility and maintain an aquatic feature in Mattocks Park, which is also home to the city’s only public fishing pond.
‘The pool is not fixable’ During a specially-called EPPC meeting on Oct. 14, commissioners unanimously voted to demolish the existing pool in Mattocks Park.
However, Edmonds said the work will not be done immediately, explaining that city crews are juggling multiple public works’ projects.
In the meantime, the EPPC is putting together requests for proposals to gather cost estimates for three options and present the recommendations during a town-hall-style meeting to invite public input.
Local residents made their voices heard during similar meetings in 2019, months after the EPPC had toured several city parks and agreed to draft the parks’ improvement plan that commissioners have started to execute within the past four months.
To kick off the process of coming up with an improvement plan, the EPPC took a look at several city parks in the fall of 2018 and sought feedback from the public — which included a public hearing in March of 2019 that allowed local residents to share ideas and suggestions.
A hearing that was held nearly three months later as a part of the application process for a 50/50 matching grant with the Arkansas Department of Tourism’s Outdoor Recreation Grant Program also drew a large crowd to City Hall.
It was during that meeting that parks and playgrounds commissioners got an earful about the poor condition of the Mattocks Park swimming pool and pool house.
The pool house contains dressing rooms/bathrooms, a small office area and an adjoining concession stand that has not been operable for several years.
Several audience members shared childhood memories of having swum in the pool for years, with some saying they began visiting the pool when it first opened in the early 1950s.
They also said the facility has seen few improvements in almost 70 years.
Ora Williams, an audience member and New Addition resident, pointed to the interior of the pool house, which contains restrooms/dressing rooms, describing a dire situation.
“I don’t know about you, but I like privacy when I shower or go to the bathroom,” she said, adding that she had purchased shower curtains and hung them to cover the bathroom stalls and shower areas.
Parks and playgrounds commissioner Alexis Alexander later said she visited the Mattocks pool after hearing from audience members and that Williams’s description of the facility was spot-on.
“I don’t want to ever have to walk through those changing rooms again. I would vote today to spend the money on that,” Alexander said in September of 2019.
Shortly after the Mattocks Park pool opened in May of 2019, Mykelle Walker, a former lifeguard who was helping out at the pool for the summer, referred to previous discussions by EPPC members and city officials about possibly closing the pool.
Walker, then a fresh graduate from Grambling (Louisiana) State University, told the NewsTimes that she had served as a lifeguard at the pool every summer since 2014, learned to swim in the pool and taught other children to swim there.
On Sept. 14, parks and playgrounds commissioners said they want local residents actively involved in the decision-making for the future of a facility that means so much to the community.
EPPC chairman Ken Goudy emphasized that the existing swimming pool is “not fixable or salvageable.”
Options
The EPPC is working to draw up RFPs and bid specifications for three options for a new aquatics facility in Mattocks Park:
• A zero-entry, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act)- accessible pool with a section for four swim lanes.
• A larger pool and a smaller, kiddie pool.
• A splash-pad only. During a meeting on Oct. 19 with the El Dorado Works Board, EPPC member Glenn Faust explained that while the type of water feature is optional, restrooms/changing rooms and a shaded area are not and will be included in the design concept.
On Oct. 14, Faust said he had reached out and gotten feedback from several cities around the state with municipally-funded parks’ districts.
“So, I’ve got three potential contractors to include in the RFP,” he said.
“I’ve also got one of the contractors who’s already done water parks and/or pools in the state in the past two years. They’re going to send me over the bid package that they’ve got and design specifications so we can have something a little bit more fuller to say, ‘OK this is exactly what we’re recommending’ and look for the price stuff,” he continued.
Edmonds said then that the city also has a template the EPPC could use to draft the RFP.
During a regular EPPC Oct. 26, Faust said he is still working on the verbiage for the RFP, noting that he had not yet received the template from the city.
Faust also suggested that the EPPC may want to hold the public hearing to learn what residents would like to see in Mattocks Park before sending out RFPs, saying that residents may want something different than the recommended options from the commission.
Several commissioners said they would rather present concrete recommendations, including cost estimates, to determine what is feasible, logistically and financially, and relay the information to residents during the public hearing.
“I think you’ve got to decide what you want to do and if you want to put it on the current footprint that that pool is on,” Edmonds previously told commissioners. “Once you decide what you want to do and how you’re going to fund it, then we tear it out and back-fill it and then start over with just a fresh site.”
“The pump house, everything on the site — the fence, the concrete deck — everything goes,” he added.
“OK, I think that’s the safest thing and what’s best for the community, to get rid of the standing water and the empty building because there’s no telling what’s inside of it or what’s happening inside of it,” Commissioner Karen Hicks said.