MANKATO — With the cool, perfectly filtered water shimmering behind them, the young lifeguards alert at their stations, the warm July sunshine filtering through puffy clouds and the 151-foot-long, triple-spin slide issuing its siren call to the kids behind the ribbon, city officials seemed to understand that the speeches and other grand re-opening ceremonies needed to be brief.
After all, for decades Mankatoans had been asking that the city provide a better pool with more features. Once approved, the municipal pool was closed in August of 2022 and stayed that way all the way through 2023. And then nearly $9 million in long-awaited renovations and upgrades dragged on about two months longer than planned — eliminating half of this year’s season.
So when Mayor Najwa Massad and Mankato Administrative Services Director Parker Skophammer had finished their remarks and Massad asked “Are we ready?”, the little voices responded in a big way.
“Yes!” shouted dozens of kids, who then enthusiastically joined in a countdown.
When they reached “One,” the oversized scissors sliced the ribbon, the fountains and squirty features in the new family pool were fired up and Mareya Powell, 2, hustled her way into Mankato history — the first swimmer into the water after the reopening of the Tourtellotte Park swimming pool.
“I love it, because there’s something for everybody to do,” said Mareya’s mother, Joneesha Fischer, who has four children ranging up to age 11. “… It’s a great addition to Mankato. We needed something like this for the kids.”
Even as Mareya was assuming the role of Neil Armstrong in the zero-depth-entry family pool, Scarlett Ostenborf was doing the same on the 21-foot-high water slide, which features three 360-degree turns. The key to being the pioneering slider, she said, was a strategy that avoided violating the “no running on the pool deck” rule at Tourtellotte.
“I was, like, fast-walking,” she explained.
That was sort of the same committed-but-cautious approach the city of Mankato had adopted in undertaking the biggest transformation of the pool since it was completed in July of 1940 as a Great Depression-era work project. The goal of making substantial improvements went back at least to the 1990s, but city leaders were determined to avoid taking a headlong plunge into a multi-million-dollar pool project.
The City Council waited until voters in 2016 approved an extension of Mankato’s half-percent sales tax, which provided a funding source for major park improvements. Then they pushed the municipal pool project down the priority list to deal with emergency repairs at the civic center and in other park facilities. Just as the pool appeared to be reaching the front of the line, the COVID pandemic hit. Most discretionary spending was put on hold, particularly projects funded by the sales tax because of concern about diving revenue if the nation dropped into a deep recession.
The estimated cost of the project rose from $4.85 million just before the pandemic hit to $5.7 million in the summer of 2021. Even the revised estimate was too low, and the City Council rejected bids that came in nearly a third higher than expected the following summer. A second round of bidding had the same result, and the council approved $8.4 million in improvements in September of 2022 — supplementing $7.27 million in sales tax proceeds with $1.15 million of federal COVID relief funds.
Work began the following month with the contract calling for a completion date of no later than May 24, 2024. Snags related to the weather and surprises found in the 84-year-old facility pushed the price up to at least $8.7 million and pushed the opening date back to July 18.
Council President Mike Laven, describing the relaxing-start/whipsaw-finish of his experience on the water slide, was confident that pool users wouldn’t be focused for long on the lost seven weeks of swimming once they experienced the new Tourtellotte Pool.
“People will forget the delay of construction every time they go down that slide,” Laven said.
Even those watching from pool chairs under the expansive new shade structures were saying it was worth the wait.
“Oh my goodness, there’s no comparison,” said Gale Schwichtenberg, whose house is immediately north of Tourtellotte Park. “It looks like a different place. And we went through all the construction with it — hearing it and watching it. It’s awesome.”
The largest feature of the park remains the Olympic-sized swimming pool with eight lanes for lap swimming. New is the zero-depth-entry family pool, which gently increases to 3 feet, 6 inches and includes a few splash-pad-style features and a mini-slide for toddlers and young children to enjoy.
That pool connects to a plunge pool at the exit of the slide, the first substantial slide the facility has ever had. The diving well, with a depth of more than 12 feet, offers three diving boards, one of which is 9 feet above the water.
The lap pool now has a ramp leading into the water to make it accessible for people who use wheelchairs or otherwise have physical limitations that prevent them from hoisting themselves out of a traditional pool.
“It’s so wonderful that they have the ramp put in and some steps for the elderly people,” said Sandra Brekke, 69, of Mankato.
Previously, Brekke had to rely on a staff-operated mechanical chair lift that wasn’t always reliable. Now, she has the freedom to enter and exit the pool whenever she wants. And that might turn out to be very often.
“Every day if I can,” she said with a broad smile. “It’s my therapy.”
The pool features are supplemented by a gutting and renovation of the bathhouse, where users found more spacious bathrooms and changing rooms — including private family facilities — along with a modern ventilation system, better accessibility and new windows and doors. Restoration work was done on the stone building’s exterior, carefully maintaining its historic integrity and its status on the National Register of Historic Places.
More room became available in the bathhouse because mechanical systems were removed, replaced by state-of-the-art water heating and filtration technology, according to city Facilities Director Jim Tatge and Andrew Burk, CEO of the YMCA, which serves as the pool operator. The improvements also include a chlorination system that doesn’t use the dangerous liquid chlorine once required at the pool.
“I couldn’t ask for a better partner,” Burk said. “Every item on our wish list was checked off.”
Park improvements continue even outside the pool fence. A 30-year-old playground, which had deteriorated to a rating of 37.5 out of 100 for its condition and safety, has been replaced with a play structure featuring a three-level tower, bridges, swings and a variety of smaller pieces for climbing, balancing and spinning.
That was a $350,000 project, and the city also created a 12-court pickleball complex just north of the pool. A $240,000 parking lot restoration, which began this week, will bring total improvements at Tourtellotte Park to about $10 million.
It’s a lot of money, but if the city follows its past practice there won’t be another major renovation until 2066. After the 1940 opening, Mankato waiting 42 years to make substantial fixes and upgrades. Following that work in 1982, the gap was another 42 years until the current project was completed.
Harder to count are the memories created, but the park was awash in those on Thursday.
Massad was reminiscing about coming to the pool as a little girl with her brother and aunt and uncle, getting out of the water only to run over to the picnic shelter to refuel with some Kentucky Fried Chicken. Sharon Dieken remembered riding her bike down to the pool from her Swiss Street home for swimming lessons nearly six decades ago.
Council member Michael McLaughlin, who grew up in the Tourtellotte Park neighborhood, recalled the hoards of kids making the summertime march to the pool.
“We’d watch the whole neighborhood, every day at about 11:30, walking down,” McLaughlin said.
He remembered, too, after glancing at the diving board, one involuntary walk home from the pool.
“I’ve been booted out for doing the butt bounce on the high board,” McLaughlin said.
Scarlett Ostenborf, the fast-walking 9-year-old who seems to have a better handle on pool rules than McLaughlin, was making memories off her own on Thursday. And, having visited the pool once in the past, she’ll also be able to tell stories someday about what Tourtellotte was like before the big renovation of 2022-24.
“The first time it was boring,” she said. “But now it’s so fun!”