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Davenport Discusses Build of Olympic Size Pool

Davenport School Board discusses possibly building an Olympic size pool in the area. October 22nd, 2012, three Davenport school board members brought up a propo...

Davenport School Board discusses possibly building an Olympic size pool in the area.

October 22nd, 2012, three Davenport school board members brought up a proposal on building an Olympic size pool in Davenport.

 "There's a lot of different discussions going on right now. We have a district of distinction committee that's looking at a lot of things, how we can make things better for the district and for our community," says Ralph Johanson, President of Davenport School Board.

One possible location would be to put the pool on the North side of Brady Street Stadium. Right now some of Davenport schools use YMCA for swim practice, but YMCA says the Quad Cities is in need of a bigger facility.

 "Within the Quad Cities there really is a high demand for a large competitive swimming environment. There is a culture of swimming within the quad cities area,” says Director of Aquatics for Scott County, James Browning.

Browning says come swim meet time, there’s not enough seats for everyone, “To get a swim meet with 300 kids to come in and bring in crowds, families, from all over around the area, for these big events ,we just don’t have the space."

During the meeting, there was also mention of collaborating with different businesses. St. Ambrose University and some local hospitals were thrown out there as possible partners.

The idea right now is that the pool would be used for schools and the public. The board however, does have some concerns.

 "This could be a fantastic addition to our community. On the other hand there are a lot of capital expenses, there are a lot of operational expenses,” says Johanson.

Even though some members from the school board are worried how they would pay for the pool, there was talk at the meeting that the project could bring revenue in.             

 “We could charge fee's that would go to offset the operational expenses of these facilities,” says Johanson.

The closest Olympic size pool is in Iowa City. Davenport School Board says this proposal will most likely be discussed again in the future but as of right now, it’s just an idea.

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