Objective

The Los Altos Community Pool Foundation is raising $3.5 million to design, construct, and endow a community pool in Los Altos. The City?s only public pool, Covington Pool, was demolished in February 2001 to allow for the reopening of Covington School. After more than a year of public discussion, Los Altos City Council has allocated 26,000 square feet of land at Rosita Park for the new pool. This land ? adjacent to, but separate from, Covington School ? is being donated by the City contingent upon funding the project.

Schools and Pools

We believe that Los Altos is a great place for families. That?s why we support the Los Altos School District in their efforts to improve our children?s education. The reopening of Covington School, now a showcase in our acclaimed school district, necessitated the demolition of Los Altos' only public swimming facility.

Swimming in Los Altos

Covington Pool was built in 1947 as a joint project between the City and the Los Altos Elementary School District. LASD provided land on the campus of Covington School, a junior high school at the time, and the public contributed funds for construction.

Generations of Los Altos children learned to swim at Covington Pool, which was retired in February 2001 after 50 years of service. Covington Pool was the home to the City's only swim lesson programs, a thriving children's swim team, and a nationally recognized adult fitness swim program. Click here for the history of Covington Pool.

Covington Pool is the former home to a dedicated contingent of swimmers. While there are over 25 heavily used pools located within 10 miles of Los Altos, these pools are operating at capacity, demonstrating the popularity of water sports in our locale, and can not supply water times to Los Altos residents and the programs formerly based at Covington.

Los Altos Masters: Over 200 adults aged 19 and over are currently registered with Los Altos Masters (LAM), an affiliate of US Masters Swimming. Members range from recreational lap swimmers to nationally competitive athletes. More than half of LAM swimmers (55%) reside in Los Altos or Los Altos Hills. LAM earned first place in the small team division at Masters Nationals in May 1999 and again took first place among medium teams for achievement during the nationwide hour swim championship in January 2000.

Covington (Youth) Swim Team: The competitive swimming program for youth at Covington includes a summer league team and a year-round program that is affiliated with Stanford Community Recreation Association. (In its association with Stanford the Covington Swim Team is known as Stanford Covington Racing Association, or SCRA. Over 150 children (80% of whom are Los Altos residents) joined Covington Swim Team during the summer of 2000. The team was league champion for four of the past five years.

Summer Swimming Lessons: Over 600 children, 77% with a Los Altos mailing address, received swimming lessons at Covington Pool during the summer of 2000. Swimming lessons at Covington Pool have been consistently sold out for the past several summers.

Organizations Renting Pool Time at Covington: Special Olympics, kayaking instruction, SCUBA instruction, and miscellaneous school groups all rely on Covington Pool. The Pool was the temporary home to St. Francis High School?s water polo team prior to and during the construction of St. Francis?s new pool.

Recreational swimmers: Weekend family swim time was available during the summers; adult lap swimming was offered at Covington Pool throughout the year.

Los Altos residents enjoy a host of benefits that make our community attractive, but we do not enjoy a surplus of public land – there are only 30 acres of park space in our City and 95 acres on our school campuses. In addition to space, Los Altos lacks an industrial tax base that would allow it to fund projects of this kind. Recreational opportunities available to children in Los Altos do not compare to those of our neighboring communities, like Palo Alto and Sunnyvale, because of this shortage of available land and funding for recreation projects.

The Los Altos Community Pool Proposal

Our mission is to provide a state-of-the-art aquatics facility that meets or exceeds the health, fitness, safety, educational, and recreational needs of Los Altans.

Members of Los Altos Masters, parents of children involved with competitive swimming, and neighbors who want to ensure that Los Altos has a swimming pool as a community resource support the proposal. From its inception, Los Altos Community Pool Foundation has committed to raising the money to design and construct a new community pool as a gift to Los Altos. When the City acquired the St. Williams property (now known as Rosita Park), representatives were appointed to the committee that planned the use of the land. Once the School District announced plans to reopen Covington School (and demolish Covington Pool in that process), we shifted our focus to developing community support for the new swimming pool. Now that the land has been allocated, Los Altos Community Pool Foundation is focused on raising funds for the $3 million construction project.

Because open space is a precious resource in Los Altos, the allocation of valuable land for a pool was a carefully considered decision for City leaders. City Council meetings, Recreation Commission meetings, and to a lesser extent, School Board meetings, have provided the platform for a significant amount of public comment and debate regarding plans for a pool. Community members expressed great interest in non-competitive recreational swimming. Specific features of the pool will be determined in consultation with the pool architect. A young children?s wading pool is a highly desired feature.

Summary

The Los Altos community has spoken in support of a new aquatics center to replace Covington Pool, and the City has responded with its decision to allocate $2 million worth of valuable real estate to this worthy project. Now, SPLASH must raise $3 million to fund the pool’s design and construction. The fund raising project is at a critical juncture: the land lease-swap agreement between the City and LASD that allows the project to move forward was signed only recently, but Covington Pool is already gone. SPLASH is counting on support from the community to bring this vision to fruition.

Los Altans enjoy a safe, quiet, family-friendly community. Yet unlike our neighboring towns bolstered by taxable industrial bases, neither Los Altos nor Los Altos Hills can fund the services that we expect and require. Our children deserve first-rate recreation opportunities to complement the top-quality education they receive at our local schools and our City cannot provide them. Our vision of a Community Pool, shared by a multitude of community organizations, can be realized only through the financial support of residents and community leaders like you. We respectfully request that you consider an investment in our community through a donation to the Los Altos Community Pool Foundation.

Organizations working together for a community pool in Los Altos: