Whether Winamac’s swimming pool rebuilding project will get $200,000 in grant funding should be known within the next couple months.
A July 13 site visit from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources was encouraging, according to Park Board Secretary Kim Burke. “We met at the pool site,” she told board members Thursday. “He did look at our bathrooms. He measured. The bathrooms are actually pretty good. There’s a couple things that might have to be tweaked to be ADA- compliant, but for the most part, they’re in compliance.”
The town’s applying for money from the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund through the DNR. Burke said the DNR got 13 applications for that money, totaling $1.9 million. However, DNR officials said they only have $1.8 million to give away, and the state may decide to take some of that for its own projects. “So they’re short a little bit,” Burke explained. “He did tell me that land acquisition projects will come before ours. So I don’t know how many of those were land acquisitions. If all of them were except ours, we’re going to be last. Don’t know. We should hear, I would say, in the next month, month-and- a-half, whether we got it or not.”
Burke added that if Winamac does get the grant, the town should be able to skip the environmental assessment process, since the pool would be built on an existing site. That would save a considerable amount of time and money.
So far, nearly $300,000 has been pledged toward the pool project through private donations, town funding, and other grants. The total cost is expected to be somewhere between $500,000 and $600,000.
