The Long Beach City Council met on Tuesday evening and approved a contract with the Earl Corporation as the general contractor for construction of the new Myrtha temporary pool in the Belmont parking lot. In accordance with the requests for bids put out, the new, temporary pool will have to be completed by October 31st of this year.
Though it will only be an outdoor facility, and so will not fully replace its predecessor, this temporary pool should provide relief for the taxed Southern California pool infrastructure after the indoor poor at Belmont was deemed unsafe. The demolition and reconstruction of the old Belmont Pool is being handled in a separate bidding process. $4 million was budgeted for this outdoor pool.
Thanks to Lucy Johnson for contributing to this report, and to Katie Rowe for sharing her images of the murals around Belmont.
Photo: Katie Rowe
Photo: Katie Rowe
Photo: Katie Rowe
So they will have the month of November essentially to host any meets. Outdoor pools are seldom, if ever used, in So Cal for higher level meets during the months of Dec, Jan, Feb, and March due to high possibility of cold, rainy weather. That was the point of scheduling these meets indoors in the first place. Belmont was the only “good” option.
So look for Winter Sectionals, etc to be held in East LA again. Thank goodness PAC 12 smarted up enough last season to schedule Federal Way in advance for 2014 PAC 12 champs.
agreed, but maybe not as big a deal as you make it out to be. the weather can be cold but is usually very moderate and most meets can go without trouble, especially age group meets, etc. glad that PAC-12s will be at Federal Way though, much more important meet especially to late NCAA qualifiers and in a completely different league of pools than ELAC.