What To Do Today
A blast of sound
The Central Florida chapter of the American Guild of Organists is holding its Rising Stars Concert at Episcopal Church of the Resurrection, 251 E. Lake Brantley Drive, Longwood. Top local students perform to raise funds for the scholarships the organization offers. The free show kicks off at 7:30 p.m. Details: cfago.org.
About two years ago, a project fit for a first family had University of Florida Chief Operating Officer Charles Lane worried.
“I'm a little concerned that word is getting out about this, so we need to manage the messaging,” Lane said in a June 2015 email to other UF officials.
The source of Lane's concern was a swimming pool. A pool much larger than the typical backyard pool. And it's still causing concern, which is why, for reasons ranging from its size to its potential instability, it still hasn't been built.
Dasburg House, the 7,400-square-foot on-campus home for UF presidents, is getting a pool and the first president to live in the house, Kent Fuchs — and his wife, Linda — have so far insisted it be dressed up with certain features.
It must be long enough to swim laps and it must be deep enough on one end to allow the athletically inclined to jump in. Those and other features have boosted the potential cost — $538,000 by one estimate for the pool, landscaping, screening and associated work.
Construction has not started because of the cost, UF spokeswoman Janine Sikes wrote in an email.
“When the (UF) Board of Trustees initially decided to build the Dasburg House as a university facility, donors contributed private funds to be used solely for the project,” Sikes said.
The Dasburg House was completed in 2015 with private money, including a sizable donation from John and Mary Lou Dasburg of Key Biscayne.
Emails and documents obtained by The Sun through a public records request filed April 7 show that Linda Fuchs was heavily involved in the project.
Linda Fuchs wanted a pool with enough length to swim laps — in a typical backyard pool, swimmers would have to turn every few strokes because of the shorter length. Kent Fuchs, meanwhile, was insistent on the 8-foot depth.
The length and depth of the pool adds to the cost. So does an issue with the ground in which the pool would be built. Underground clay deposits in some parts of campus have caused costly cracking when the clay expands with water, resulting in the heaving of floating slabs. A technique used to try to control water through the use of gravel under the building is unreliable.
The same conditions exist under the pool site.