Glen Mary Wading Pool Plan Is a Splash

Council Hears Update about Wading Pool Design

Carrie Jones

and

Shaun Farrar

Jul 17, 2024

BAR HARBOR—Two small spash pads and a bit of a playground? Check.

Three entrances to make an area ADA compliant and to help keep cars a bit further away from a residential neighborhood? Check.

A slightly smaller pool with two-foot water depth? Most likely a check.

A pool surface that isn’t asphalt and has oil seeping through? Check.

A water filtration system that works, has no crushed pipes, and doesn’t promote algal blooms? Check.

A neighborhood gathering place for the families and kids of Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island back in service? That’s the definite goal.

On Tuesday night, the Bar Harbor Town Council gave a general nod for the approval of the conceptual layout for the return of the beloved Glen Mary Wading Pool.

”I feel like we should clap!” one woman yelled from the audience after a presentation by Mike Rogers of Lark Studios.

The wading pool at Glen Mary Park (located on 7.5 acres off Glen Mary Road and Waldron Road) has been closed since 2022, thanks to broken piping beneath the ground.

Public Works Director Bethany Leavitt said the system was last upgraded in 2009, which was before Leavitt’s time in Bar Harbor.

The town leases the property from the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association (VIA) and renewing the lease, which expires in 2024, was vital to rebuilding the town’s pool. The town performs the maintenance on the property as long as there is open access to the public.

Rogers was retained by the VIA to create a plan for the area. The predicted costs for the project—mostly because of the cost of concrete and all the broken utilities needed to support the system—is likely between $1.5-$2 million but those are rough estimates that Rogers hopes to have nailed down further now that the councilors have given an informal nod to go ahead with the pool’s return according to the design he laid out before them.

VIA Board President Dick Cough said that it was originally the town’s project, but the VIA stepped in to try to get it done more quickly.

He added that they’d have been further along in the project if it hadn’t been for the Shore Path restoration that was needed because of the destruction from winter storms. That Shore Path restoration is close to a million dollars.

The VIA would take the active role in fundraising for the Glen Mary project just as it has for the Shore Path restoration.

Town Manager James Smith said a lease between the town and VIA was signed before he began work with the town and they are currently working on another. He said he saw no problems getting that signed and agreed on.

One of the major questions is how to pay for the plan.

The town has set aside $125k to redo the area, Cough said. There is $50k seed money from VIA, $50k from the Thorndikes, and he expects to sell benches.

“We’re willing to accept any help where we can get it,” Cough said, referencing a potential GoFundMe created by neighbors in the area.

During Council comments at the end of the meeting, Vice Chair Gary Friedmann said that he didn’t foresee an issue or much difficulty for the VIA to quickly raise the money because it’s a project people want to support.

THE PLANS

Rogers went though the plans for the Council just as he had for the Parks and Recreation Committee in May.

“We took the oval shape and we maintained that,” Rogers said of the pool. It is a bit smaller in size for easier access and to make it a bit easier for the water filtration process.

The current plans show a pool of roughly the same size and shape as the existing one. It would decrease fifteen feet in width and forty feet in length. Some of that length would now be two splash pad areas, one for younger children and one for older children. The site would also now be ADA compliant.

The new design has a family area at the northern side that includes a shady area and picnic tables.

The picnic tables will be bolted down so that people can’t continue to move the picnic tables into the water, which hurts the filtration system, Rogers said.

There will also be playground equipment, which isn’t finalized yet, but will likely be comparable to Park Street playground made more basic.

State law only allows the pool to be two feet deep unless there is a lifeguard on duty.

The current asphalt is not allowed as a pool surface, Rogers said. “When I showed this to multiple pool consultants, they laughed at me and said, 'Oh no.’”

Oil was leaking up through the asphalt, he said. Pipes are crushed underneath. Algae blooms in the empty pool currently when it rains.

Parks and Recreation Committee member and VIA Board member Erin Cough said that when she looked at the plan’s three site entrances and with the pool’s zero-degree entry points, she saw a way to make the site safer and more inclusive. That helps with an emergency as well for ambulances and EMTs, she said.

The fact that the pool that our children swim in is asphalt is abominable, she said.

Between that family area and the actual swimming area are two splash pad areas and a zero-degree entry between the splash pads to allow ADA access. The splash pads are not fancy or excessively sized to avoid becoming an attraction point for non-residents, which has been a concern of many residents. The two pads are designed with age groups in mind with one being for younger children and one being for older children.

Rogers said he heard the concern about the splash pads early on in the process and from people in the audience, but he believes that the scale of the pads, which is smaller makes people more comfortable with it. The fence will also have screening along the edges to make that area less noticeable to those outside the park.

The actual body of water will be reduced by 40 feet in length. Thirty of those feet will accommodate the splash pad areas and the zero-degree entry point on the northern end. The other ten feet of loss will be on the southern side to make the drop-off from the garage door of the facilities building more gradual and less dangerous.

The pool will also decrease in width by 15 feet. This reduction is to make the sidewalk that goes around the pool ADA complaint and also to allow the construction of a stone seating area/retaining wall on the western side to elevate the ground against water flow from the wetland area.

The plan would encourage parking on Spring Street rather than Waldron, which is a residential area. Parallel parking is currently allowed on Spring Street and there would be an entrance on that side.

There will also be additional stone benches placed around the perimeter of the pool. There was some discussion about the bench material at the meeting.

One of the decisions that needed to be enforced was the depth of the pool. It is designed for a two-foot-depth. A three-foot depth would require lifeguards, which would be expensive and potentially difficult for the town (which has no parks and recreation department) to supervise. Some attending worried that children wouldn’t be able to learn to swim in water that was only two-feet deep. Erin Cough said later in the meeting that the MDI YMCA has a free program for all children who are five to come and learn to swim at its pool.

"‘Swim MDI Y at Age 5!’ is a water safety and learn to swim program for children who are currently age 5.

MDI YMCA Executive Director Ann Tikkanen said, “We design what we call program sessions, conducted every eight weeks, the next one begins after Labor Day. In the Y's program Guide and on our website, families can get all of the information they need and register at no cost with a promo code "‘swimmdiyage5!’”

Rogers had presented the plan to a packed Council Chambers on May 6 to the town’s Parks and Recreation Committee. Approximately 25 members of the public attended that meeting.

“When we left that last Parks and Rec Committee meeting, everyone was happy,” Rogers said.

WHO IS IT FOR?

One of the main points of discussion Tuesday night was who the park was intended for.

Friedmann said that some neighbors were concerned that the splash pad would bring in tourists. “They really don’t want that. They just want this for the local kids.”

Rogers said the Park Street Playground, which is a much smaller area, is never overcrowded though sometimes kids who are not from here play there along with the YMCA groups and others.

“I feel like this is a good opportunity,” Rogers said of Glen Mary.

When he moved here and his daughter was one, she went in to the pool and she came out, and she was black and oily from the waist down. They never went back.

“If a couple kids who are here on vacation go in the pool, great,” Rogers said. What matters is that there’s a local resource for kids, a place for them to safely play in water, get accustomed to it, for their families to gather and meet and talk for free.

Councilor Matthew Hochman said that there have always been visiting kids who have used it as well. The reality is that it’s a town park, he said. Parks are meant to be free and open to all.

Parks and Recreation Chair John Kelly thanked the VIA for its partnership and he also encouraged the Town Council to go ahead and support the plan.

“Look at Town Hill. Look at Park Street. Look at the skate park,” he said, mentioning the three town-owned areas in Bar Harbor that have free outdoor recreational fun for the town’s children. All three areas were fundraised by parents or Bar Harbor (MDI) Rotary Club, not the town.

“It’s really important for us to do this,” Kelly said. “This is one of the few things we can do for our kids….We’ve got to think about the kids.”

Back in late 1983, the Bar Harbor Town Council entertained six options for the pool’s future. At the time there was a lot of worry that the town would reduce the size of the 200-foot pool.

Judy Fuller said at a December 2022 Parks and Recreation meeting, “I’ve lived across from Glen Mary pool for almost 50 years. I’ve seen generations grow up.”

She spoke of kids wading, playing Marco Polo, the sounds of laughter and community.

“I’ll never forget the lovely sound of hockey pucks when I was trying to sleep,” she joked, and seconded the importance of the skating rink continuing in winter, which Councilor Kyle Shank asked about on Tuesday and Rogers said was possible.

“It was a real real loss,” Fuller said in December.

Mary Shannon donated a piece of her family’s estate to the VIA in 1894. That land became Glen Mary Park. Her estate also included the Ledgelawn Inn. Around 1900 the park was first flooded for skating.

Ellen Grover, who has lived for 40 years in the neighborhood, said on Tuesday that she was representing a larger group of local people who are committed to the park and keeping it healthy.

“It’s an amazing proposal.” What’s missing, she said, is that the public really haven’t had a chance to look at it. “We think the absence of the pool for our kids is atrocious.”

She said she felt that the public has been left out of the process and she worries that it isn’t the low-cost pool that the neighborhood and public might want.

“Not everything has to be big and grand,” Grover said.

Kelly said, “There’s going to be a full range of opinions.”

He said that he believed the committee gave it a lot of public vetting. “We are the ultimate users and maintainers, but we’re not necessarily the ones who call every shot for every design element of the pool.”

Both he and Rogers stressed that the Parks and Recreation Committee, unlike the Planning Board or Town Council, is an advisory committee. This meeting and presentation before the councilors, Kelley said, is another opportunity like the Parks and Recreation Committee, to give public input.

“People loved the plan,” Jeff Dobbs, former councilor, Parks and Recreation Committee and member of the VIA said. “The one thing I’ve been hearing for forever and ever is ‘get the damn thing done.’”

Tanya Ivanow said that she’s “found it very sad” that the area has been empty when she drives by.

“What is the alternative?” she wondered, if the pool isn’t repaired.

Shank said the town can’t unilaterally do anything to the property because it’s owned by the VIA.

“There is no alternative. We need to do it,” Dick Cough said.

CLARIFICATION AND UPDATE: This story has been updated with a clarification about the YMCA’s free swimming program. It has also been updated to delete the fire pit for winter time use because it was removed from the most recent incarnation of the plans.