bporterfield@pvdemocrat.com — One Pauls Valley community group is among the many right in the middle of helping a real family project that appears to be headed in the right direction.
PV’s chamber of commerce is working with a number of others to raise the private funds needed to complete the overall money total to pay for the construction of a new local swimming pool and water park.
Construction for that new pool facility is already well underway next to the Reynolds Recreation Center in Wacker Park with plans to open for business by next year’s swim season.
Work is continuing at a furious pace to finish up the fundraising needed to complete once and for all the money that will pay to make the water park a reality.
Chamber President Della Wilson, who is also a member of a pool committee working for some time to plan for the facility, says the fundraising efforts are moving at a pretty good clip. However, more work is still needed.
”The chamber is involved in a number of community development projects,” Wilson said.
”One of these projects has been helping with fundraising for the new aquatic center.”
The overall cost of the project comes to around $3.6 million with most of that being paid through a $3.2 million loan over a 20-year period by the city of Pauls Valley.
Efforts to privately raise the remaining $400,000 has been ongoing for some time now.
”We have narrowed the gap to $250,000 and that could soon go down even more,” Wilson said. ”We’re whittling away. We have other meetings scheduled for after the first of the year,” she said, referring to the fundraising efforts.
Wilson’s comments came as she updated chamber board members during a recent meeting.
With sections of concrete being poured last week, the future aquatic center will include a large swimming pool, a lazy river ride, open and closed water slides, a bowl slide and a lap and dive pool.
Once complete the pool will be a part of operations in conjunction with the local recreation center.
The fundraising efforts got a big boost back in October when the PV City Council voted to commit $100,000 in tourism related funds to the pool project.
Adding to the project is the recent hiring of Billy Tomlinson, who will serve as the aquatic supervisor for both the future water park and the Bosa indoor swimming pool located near the local high school’s campus.
While updating chamber board members Wilson said there have been other developments.
For one it’s been announced the site of the former Love’s store just west of I-35 on state Highway 19 will soon become a Shell gas station and convenience store with a Papa John’s Pizza restaurant inside.
Wilson added she’s been told the Chickasaw Nation plans to move the production operations of Bedre Chocolate next March. The good news, she said, is the tribe plans to do something with the facility located in a southwest portion of PV.
”We will lose Bedre, but the Chickasaw Nation will do something there,” Wilson said. “We just don’t know what that will be.”
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