The expression “swim at your own risk” has never been more accurate than now. The Sutton Apartments pool has been closed by the Health Department.
This comes as no surprise to the residents of Sutton, since many have witnessed the deterioration of the pool; in recent history, it has never stayed open for more than a few months at any given point in time. Now, it has gotten so bad that the pool did not open at all this year.
The pool is about 10 years old, so understandably it is “tired.” The surface of the pool is sloughing off and the filter is run down. After all this time, the pool is definitely ready for some rehab and Scott Bitikofer, director of Campus Facilities, is ready to provide it.
“We don’t enter with hard and fast notions of what it should be,” said Bitikofer on future plans for the pool area. Bitikofer wants to get an idea of how the students feel about the pool, whether they want it to remain a pool or turn it into a nice gathering area. To engage how the students feel, he will be working with the Residence Hall Association (RHA) to create a series of surveys to hand out to the students.
One of his biggest concerns is hearing not only from current Sutton residents, but also from future residents, which would involve all of the students living on-campus, so that everyone will be heard. By using these surveys, Bitikofer believes that Facilities will have a strong idea of what the students desire, and will feel more comfortable making the best decision for the students.
At this point, the Sutton residents just want something to be done about the current nesting ground for mosquitoes. Alexis Neu ’11 wishes that the project would just get underway. “I did enjoy going to the pool…I’m disappointed it won’t be started sooner.” Some are questioning whether it is even worth putting in a new pool, since the Cornell Campus Center provides a large pool for the student body to enjoy. On the other hand, the apartments are far from the Campus Center, making it harder for students to enjoy the Florida sunshine at the pool. “They should redo the pool because of its location,” Petersen Attwell ’13 said. “It’s inconvenient to go to the other pool.”
This will not be an overnight project by any stretch of the imagination. “I don’t anticipate this to be a single shot type of thing,” Bitikofer affirmed, saying he wants to “let people contemplate the options.” Regardless, students should be on the lookout for news from the RHA regarding the future of the Sutton pool and how to get your opinion heard. The sooner the students express themselves, the sooner Sutton residents will know where to tan.
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