Cookeville City Council will explore a preliminary engineering and design plan for the future aquatic center.
At a Monday Work Session, City Manager James Mills said that the city had budgeted some $125,000 this year to complete a feasibility study for an ice and an aquatic facility. Mills said he recommends forgoing a feasibility study for the aquatic center and using the money for different preliminary work.
“We don’t believe there is a need for a feasibility study for an aquatics facility,” Mills said. “We think there is a need for an aquatics facility, but we don’t need to pay someone to tell us ‘do you need an aquatics facility,’ because we think there’s an overall demand for that.”
Mills said after receiving the Leisure Services master plan, the council recognized that a major want of the community was a facility of this nature. Because of this, he instead recommends using the funds to flesh out the details.
“I think it’s pretty obvious a pool is going to work,” Mills said. “What else will work? And that’s what we need somebody to tell us. And in what phases, and where.”
Mills said he does suggest doing a feasibility study for the potential ice facility. Leisure Services Director Ricks Woods said he plans to have recommendations for entering a feasibility study contract to present to city council later this month. He said he currently has two proposals.
Mills said that they will need more time to get specifications for the aquatic facility in requests for proposals before they can bring it to the city council. He said they hope to have a better idea for the work on the aquatics facility by sometime in September or October.
Councilmember Eric Walker asked if the council had budgeted for designs. He said he wants to make sure funds for a feasibility study wouldn’t be wasted if the council skipped that step and went straight to design plans. Mills said it would not.
Walker said he thinks it is important for the public to understand that the project is still in its earlier phases, and that the council still has to find other ways to budget and further fund the project.
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