After a three-month closure, Gainesville’s Northeast pool, also known as the Dwight H. Hunter pool, has reopened and is ready for a busy summer season following renovations to the pool’s liner and equipment. The City of Gainesville closed its only heated, year-round pool in January after city staff discovered that the pool’s vinyl liner, the barrier between swimmers and the concrete of the pool structure, was faulty. Installed and built in 2008 by Natare, an Indianapolis-based pool manufacturer, the pool’s liner began to peel away and float later that summer, Jeff Moffitt, a city recreation supervisor, said in a press release Tuesday. Gainesville residents and loyal pool-goers didn’t take long to notice the botched liner, including Jill Cunningham, a professor at the Business Department at Santa Fe College.
“There was a huge, gaping hole in the pool liner, for a long time, maybe a year and longer than six months,” she said. “The liner was torn at the seam at one end of the pool. It made the pool dirty, mostly sand and dirt drifted in, but not bad, bad dirt. It wasn’t very nice to look at.”
While Cunningham doesn’t work for the city, she said she knew that city officials didn’t know quite who to blame for the malfunctioning liner, with Natare placing the blame on local installers. Hired by city officials to assess the issue, independent contractor David Markey, of Georgia-based Markey and Associates Inc., reported to city officials that the liner shrunk and tore away from the concrete base of the pool after being installed. Markey’s report couldn’t pinpoint why the liner had torn away.
For more information on the pool’s opening, please contact The City of Gainesville.