About 60 Schenectady residents packed a meeting room at the Schenectady County Public Library's main branch Tuesday night for an information session on the county’s proposed aquatics center.
The town hall — organized by the group Schenectady Residents for Responsible Development — came after budget changes to the proposed aquatics center, which is 13 years in the making, gave some residents sticker shock.
“This project is a 13-year project, and I do want to say that I feel for the makers of this project. They are very committed to bringing something for the community, and I do recognize that,” said Najee Walker, who organized the town hall with his husband, Daniel Flynn. “But our community feels unheard. They have felt unheard, and that’s the reason why we are here today.”
The county projected earlier this year that the nearly 147,000-square-foot aquatics center would cost $125 million, up from earlier projections that put the price tag at around $40 million or $50 million. The county has since reduced projected costs to $105 million by reducing the size of the center by 57,000 square feet.
County legislators — four of whom were in attendance Tuesday night — attributed the dramatic price increase to tariffs and more accurate assessments of the costs.
Under the latest budget estimates, the project would receive private and state funding, with Schenectady County shouldering $45 million of the costs through a mixture of funds, debt, hotel bed taxes and a possible $5 million naming rights deal.
Supporters of the project in attendance argued that the pool would generate revenue from tourism for swimming competitions and provide pool space the city’s children need for swimming lessons. The center would also be used by SUNY Schenectady students.
“We are also out of [pool] capacity in this area and across the state,” said Stacey Hengsterman, CEO and president of Special Olympics New York, an organization with 51,000 athletes participating annually. “We are competitive swimmers, so we also need that size pool. We can't just go to every pool to do it. This is how people with intellectual differences are included.”
Other attendees argued the county should cut its losses. They said the project is too much of an economic gamble for a city already grappling with economic challenges.
“We heard people today in the meeting talk about the homelessness, talking about poverty, lack of jobs, rising costs and expenses,” said Bailey Dineen, a Schenectady resident who spoke out against the project. “Me personally, I do feel there is a need for indoor recreational services, and I think something like an indoor basketball court that’s open to the community would serve a lot more people within this county than an Olympic-sized swimming pool.”
Dineen does not agree that the project helps the city.
“We are being gaslit by being told that this is fulfilling a community need — that's not what this is about,” she said.
If the project does move forward, Walker and Flynn said they’d like to see the county sign a community rights agreement that would guarantee community members access to the pool, even as they share the space with swimming competitions and SUNY Schenectady.
“That was something we thought about as we were finalizing the program,” Walker said. “The idea that the community would be able to have that sort of buy-in with the guarantee that they would have the access to it, and we kind of negotiate that, right?”
