POTTSTOWN – West Pottsgrove officials have asked the township to sell them a piece of land at the Pottstown Municipal Airport to help them transform the township’s former swimming pool site into a memorial park.
The motion was made public at a work meeting on August 7 by Deborah Roesener, West Pottsgrove Township Manager.
However, the land required by West Pottsgrove is earmarked for additional hangars at the airport and it remains to be seen whether both requirements can be met.
The Colonial Pool operated as a private, nonprofit community swimming pool since 1968, but fell behind on its tax payments and eventually fell victim to a combination of age, a sluggish economy and the proliferation of homes with private backyard swimming pools.
The municipality paid $71,000 in back taxes and unpaid bills to take over the pool in 2010.
The municipality also invested at least $250,000 in renovating the pool before it reopened in August 2011. However, the municipality had little luck with the operation of the pool, and it was closed in the middle of the season in 2016 when the contracted operator left the pool.
In 2019, West Pottsgrove councillors decided to permanently close the park and convert it into a park, as it had been closed for the previous three years because no operator could be found to run it and no one wanted to buy it.
Since then, township officials have been working to find a way to make the property available to the public and combine it with an adjacent 2.5-acre parcel where the gazebo is located. That property is accessed by a right-of-way on Berks Street that the township hopes to widen and use as a two-lane entrance to the expanded park.
The former swimming pool site has only 17 parking spaces with access from the Von Steuben and Anthony Wayne drives. From 2012 to 2016, West Pottsgrove leased space on the airport property from the county for additional overflow parking.
The current master plan calls for converting the former pool area into an “inclusive playground” provided by Adventure Grove, adding a new pickleball court next to the pavilion, adding a veterans memorial where the baby pool was, improving the existing basketball court, including adding lighting and a paved walkway, improving access to Berks Street and adding additional parking.
The Pottstown Area Health and Wellness Foundation provided $15,000 to develop the park’s master plan and a smaller grant from the Pottstown Regional Planning Committee’s recreation division helped fund upgrades to the basketball court, Roesener told the city council Wednesday.
Patti Grimm, a member of the Pottsgrove School Board and Recreation Council, explained to the council that Adventure Grove is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating playgrounds that can be used by everyone, including children with special needs.
West Pottsgrove Commissioner Howard Shawell, who raised a child with special needs himself, said the inclusive playground is open to everyone, not just West Pottsgrove residents. “I want everyone to understand that this is not just a West Pottsgrove thing. It’s available to West Pottsgrove, Upper Pottsgrove, Lower Pottsgrove, North Coventry and Pottstown.”
However, for the plan to work as intended, the municipality needs less than one hectare of airport land. The problem is that the municipality has plans for this site, even if they are not entirely new.
Roesener noted that when County Manager Justin Keller approached the county about its plans for the airport, he sent a map and plan for the expansion from 2008.
“It took the community a year to get a place on the City Council agenda,” Roesener wrote in an email in response to a Mercury inquiry.
Apparently, that audience was only granted because Councilwoman Lisa Vanni insisted on putting West Pottsgrove on the agenda last month, a vote she won. “You are our neighbors, and if your neighbors want to talk to you, you should at least listen,” Vanni said last month.
“This is an area that was previously leased to the municipality and has not been developed in decades,” Roesener wrote. “Their reluctance appears to be based on a nearly 16-year-old plan for the airport, and we are not aware of any plans to move that forward. We are simply asking them to consider minor changes to the location of the proposed hangars in this area that would accommodate both plans.”
However, implementation of the airport plan may be more imminent than it appears on paper, Keller told the council. “It’s closer now than it’s ever been,” Keller said. “We’ve focused on the existing facilities we already have.”
He told the council that the plan for 22 new hangars was on hold until recently. Due to the age of the airport, other maintenance work took priority. A lot of runway paving work has been done, the final work will be completed this fall, and the municipality will also put a new roof on the maintenance hangar.
“We are now closer to building new facilities that will generate revenue for the airport through hangar rentals,” Keller said.
He estimated that building the new hangars will cost the township about $2 million. Half of that cost could be covered by a grant from the Federal Bureau of Aviation. The township has set aside another $500,000 for the hangars. Rents for the new hangars would bring in $150,000 to $200,000 a year, meaning “we would pay off the $2 million cost in five to seven years,” Keller told the council. He added that “there are always people on the waiting list for hangars. I think there are more than 20 people on the waiting list right now.”
Councilman Ryan Procsal pointed to the benefits of an inclusive playground and asked if there was a way to change the airport plans to accommodate West Pottsgrove’s wish, but Keller seemed skeptical. “That would make (the hangars) unfeasible,” Keller said.
He said when the existing “T” hangars were built in 2012, the stormwater infrastructure for the 22 new cantilever hangars was already in place. “So from a site planning standpoint, we’re already set up there,” Keller said. “We’re already set up there. We’ve got the stormwater, it’s flat and most of the paving is in place.”
“There really isn’t another perfectly flat spot where we wouldn’t have to demolish a building or move something else to accommodate the request from West Pottsgrove,” Keller said.
Ironically, West Pottsgrove wants to buy back land that once belonged to it. In 1962, Pottstown Borough “annexed” 112.57 acres of land from the borough, which became the Pottstown Municipal Airport. In 1966, it annexed another 2.6 acres of land, which is now part of the airport.
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