reconstruction of the underworld pool was a very collaborative and unifying community effort indeed it serves as a model that i hope we can replicate when we turn our attention to other recreational projects in town i want to recognize and thank several parties that made his collaborative best effort possible and please raise your hands to members of the underwood pool building committee only i think the underwood family because without their vision one hundred years ago we would not be celebrating here today member of the historic district commission expertise and perspective to the project that led to what we see today two years ago this month we began the planning process and during those two years we had only two major setbacks the first was the  contractor that math did we were faced with three options cancel the project greatly reduce the size of the pool pool for mary rejected that was to raise more money to meet the pull of the bid and we decided to much the on the project manager she provided great advice and also professional scrutiny of the budget and was a liaison among the committee and the architect and the contractor we have lots of counselor use that school almost all the time but not this week because the summer program will and on thursday and so it might he difficult to get in there but if you are packing on the neighborhood streets please do not walk the emergency some money but most of the contributions have been a five to ten or fifteen thousand dollars range because we're trying to stretch it out as long as we possibly could and so we had a foundation meeting which includes our board warren farrell and marcy and some of the folks from belmont and one of the members who just had a fifty thousand dollars contribution it was a gas fifty thousand dollars had never done it like fifty thousand dollars before and then somebody else said well that seems like a lot and i said well you know what i got four this town's got good bones this time it's got bones in it worth investing in this is not good money after bad this is good money after good and our bank is there this is the end by all these public part private partnerships which really make this work and when everybody chips in and does their role that one hundred over hundred years ago people were thinking about the kids in belmont is our children and communities children and the second piece is you know when this pool opened in two thousand nine hundred twelve it was less than sixty days f when fenway park and opened less than sixty days from when the titanic had sunk when all that time has passed we've had over we've had two world wars countless other wars and depression we've landed on the that have been built on this sacred land the ice cream that's been consumed syria over you consume i argue very good for a long time i'm always interested in the ice cream but that has not changed and it all goes back of kids learning to never swim by themselves you never alone swimming at this pool swimming in a pool where there's always help readily available a wonderful life guards in the train staff at the pool knowing what the rules come in to visit area so everything that we have spent the summer over the last few years talking to people about it in terms of being say thinking of taking care of our precious children is really embodied by the town of down pool the then director of our public health department informed me that we would need to take away the dime because that was unsafe and they said at the time of oil that's going to cause a problem in fact some of you may have come to the meeting you wish we had over one hundred residents  selectmen former colleagues who were selected that vision is to stay and it will continue for the next three years i will be here one hundred years from now and i can imagine a hundred years from now another member of the force like will be talking about the then new poll that's it's interesting to take that tour because as was said here before that mr underwood fell for the boys and girls in his neighborhood brief were not having as many good times as he did in his own childhood and he decided that this location would make a good spot or of playground and almost as an afterthought the latest prevented since it had also had several naturals bring a swimming  and as those of you who know about this that's exactly how it started out and you can read more about this in the summer historical archives now we stand here as they did on bunker hill day which those of you i had to look this up hello everyone i'm joanna jubilance editor of the belmont citizen herald and belmont dot wicked local dot com it's a historic day in belmont today saturday august eighth we just had the ribbon cutting for the brand new five point six million dollar underwood pool and i'm here today with lorraine benoit she's the manager of the underwood pool and it's just such an exciting time aren't you excited oh i am it was a long time coming and i can't tell you how many situations like this i've been through where they get architects and whatever and fund raise but this group really did it and they did it in a big way we out of with the old and in with the law you'll never leave a family member behind because it's something he had to entertain everyone you're going to have maybe meals together you can come down and picnic and stay the day it's a really entertaining beautiful there's no swimming today because of the pool officially be open the day after tomorrow so everybody's here just taking a tour and i'm going to have lorraine give you a tour those of you who couldn't be here today celebrate if you can describe for the viewers like what's behind us all right to my right we have the vending area not open this year but next year we'll have water and chips and whatever when that's the pool brains of the pool i should say the pumping area and the next area between the two buildings we have a picnic area where you can come and have lunch your dinner whichever or however long you down here for and then we have the other bath house and in that bathhouse we have for family bathrooms we have an entrance area where we have an office and there's a first aid station in there which we never had before as you walk you have an area of the pool which is zero entry and you will have the little sprinkling area to entertain the little kids zero entry is just like the beach before we always walked into foot deep water we never had this play area where the kids could just sit down we had a foot deep but this is zero and they'll walk right down into three and a half feet to my left is the sly and there is a restriction and you don't hit the right height but you do pass the swimming test you can go down the slide we have we usually had when somebody passed the test i had a die with a pee on it and i used to hit your membership well this year we went out and bought b and that say i passed the underwood test and you'll wear that around your wrist when you go swimming so will know who passed the test or not and your everything's open to you at that point when you pass that test you'll have the diving board whatever the next area over is the deeper and and we have the red square area where we have the diving board and we have a lap area of six laps and the depth of four to six feet and then off shooting now we have another three and a half foot pool so there's certainly a lot of depth that is going to be a lot of kids going to take part in whatever they feel comfortable with so it's great and that ladies and gentlemen was the grand tour thank you manage to take your tour walking around it's beautiful what would you say as your favorite favorite part i'm just so impressed with the way they accommodated so many different kinds of users and those poor women young kids older kids people who want to do people want to swing and people who just want to splash around there's a space for everybody so i think is a very very well designed pool that's what i'm really impressed with and i'm just i'm just so grateful all the people the community made this happen and we have nine am to desk every day through labor day to enjoy and oh yeah i remember over forty years ago i would buy care with my friends during the summer you know what we would do is we would adjourn the school year and then not see most of our friends throughout the throughout the summer and it ended up that underwood pool would be the place where we would all meet and see our classmates that lived in other areas of town so so it was always a wonderful experience uniting experience parents get to catch up with each other and socialize as well or just rest and read a book this expansion of the pool and the improvements is just magnificent i can see it attracting more  people and serving the community for many more years to come if you happen to know what the maximum capacity of the pool is i and my concern is i think because a lot of people going to find out about this where it's going to get out other towns neighboring towns are going to want to come to the underwood pool but i mean are they going to give belmont residents priority over nonresident you know i i would certainly think so i would think belmont residents should have priority because it's a belmont poll and the taxpayers you know you know paid for it and i would expect that you are going to see a surge of belmont residents coming to the pool it kind of went down after the diving board was closed and  my prediction is that's going to change and that was one of our premises when we when we decided to go to a poll this great so i think this is wonderful i think this is great one of my objectives is to keep our capital projects moving so this is the first one off and then there are many other very worthy projects like for example the skating rink or in desperate need of a skating rink i very much support recreational projects grease so i'll see you monday in your swim gear after work of course there's no select me money right no no selectmen meeting i'm not sure you're going to see me here monday but you will see me here at some point she was a lifeguard here she learned to swim here and fern what do you think about this new pool hall for change and i think it's absolutely beautiful i really am i mean i was  hearted when the you know was destroyed but still we needed a new pool it's so much better for the education and swimming of the children i just think it's wonderful and i preach it everything everybody's done in belmont for this do you swim today you're still an active swimmer i've been in a new wing the masters i belong to the mount auburn club and watertown and i use their swimming pool which is beautiful you look like you're ready to dive in but you know it's not it's not allowed to monday right i put on my brain so because i live in my bed and so that's why and i will come next week i'm here with our middlesex district attorney marian ryan who's also a belmont resident she's lived in belmont for twenty six years and she used to come to the pool when her children were young and she's going to tell you what she thinks about the new pool i think the pool is wonderful it's a great place for people to be coming first of all the to have the kids learn to swim learn the safety rules around water and also for people to just be together and enjoy this beautiful setting now i know you have a favorite new feature of this new pool you can tell everybody what that is i do i'm very impressed that the pool planning committee thought about opening up the space for the emergency vehicles hopefully will never need them we if we do they've clearly provided for that as well as so many of the other safety features here so what is your advice to parents when they when they come here with their young children well the first thing is making sure your kids learn to swim early and that they become good swimmers that pool runs great lessons it's a wonderful opportunity for that making sure kids are never alone in the water that they understand that list for small children even two inches of water can be deadly and also knowing how to access help if you need that so we want to come here we want to have fun sometimes parents can get distracted and i know they don't they don't allow flotation devices here i'm not sure what the reason is but there are lifeguards on duty but  we always have to be vigilant we do have to be vigilant and what's important to remember is that an actual drowning or near drowning doesn't look like what you might see in the movies it is silent and it happens very quickly so people really do have to have adults that it designated to watch certain children really keeping an eye on them all the time well that's great advice and i really hope to see you here you think you'll become obvious here i certainly will i look forward to it it's a beautiful setting it really is last year's pool we had a big circle so it's easy for us too rotate but this year is little difference as you can see we're now working with a circle working with like a rectangle and then a beach entry and  we're going to attack it the same way we're going to yeah i know so you're a lifeguard at the old pool too how would you say this new pool is you know just better for you as a lifeguard and even though the people who are going to come here what are the improvements that you are most impressed with i think duffy the diving board you know kids often love that you know jumping in the pool you know the past two years we had to take out the diving board because the pool death wasn't deep enough was coming apart you know a lot of problems so with addition of the new pool will be better for the town and doesn't the lifeguard now have its own area where you can get shade you know get out of the sun go indoors and cool definitely we have a you most excited about with this new i'm really excited to spend a lot of do you know how to swim a little have you been taking lessons going to come here with your friends yes well we'll see you on how about mom mom do you want to say if you were or what we're really excited we've been members of the pool for four years and this is just wonderful and we're so excited i mean it's a beautiful sight i mean the surrounded the surrounding trees are lovely it's just it's just a nice area and always great people here we have a good time but now that it's the new pool what do you think i think it's going to be even better yeah it's going to be a lot of fun but like a public swim club in a way right yeah i mean i feel like feels like you know like a private country club i mean we're so blessed to have us in belmont it's a beautiful pool it will be great for kids learning how to swim and also be great entertainment for the kids or like to dive so we're going to have water basketball which though of the basketball hoop is on an on the way right and we are looking at some water polo kinds of activities for the older kids because we're hoping that this won't just be a pool for kids up to the age of twelve but rather people will continue to calm throughout their teenage years and maybe have water basketball games and so forth in the evenings and  i think that we can have a much broader program here than we had in the old pool what would you say is your favorite part of this this new facility and my favorite part well i think i like those little fountains that the children can run through when they enter the pool where those sounds always part of the plants that i remember seeing them on drawing they have always been part of the plan it's a great idea how did you come up with these ideas  your we had an extremely capable aka tact who's got lots of experience and when we talked about ideas for things that kids might do in the pool he was very helpful talking about the kinds of things that you know really would be allowed and also would be safe so we wanted the slides it took a long time because the state department of public health was resistant but we were able to reorganize the slide so that it met their standards and the we were not really intended to have a shade structure in the pool so that people would have a little shade with the small kids but that was not allowed by the state department of public health so so we took it out and across if you look across the pool over to the grass that's on the north side of the pool you'll see very l e round discs in the ground and those are the bases for a lot of very large can to leave it on braless which are on route and will be i don't know that they'll be put up this year in future years they will be they have to provide a lot of shade along the south side and we were very conscious of the fact that it is important to have shade for people what is the maximum capacity of this  used to have to get in line to come into the pool if they didn't get here at some appropriate time and then i would go by with the younger child and there they would be sitting outside waiting to get him do you think that will still be the case or do you think more people go away in the summer than when your kids were young i don't know i think it's a different it's different because most children are not at home with their parents during the day they're being taken care of somewhere else so i think probably there won't be the same number of children and for coming especially by themselves because of course people today don't let the children come by themselves i i can't say how excited we are about this you know as a as a resident myself with young children that there's still a month left to enjoy this this pool we hope for good weather how are they going you mean tainted so that it doesn't get in such disrepair like the old pool are they going to be covering it in the winter draining it i don't think they drain the pool in the winter and we're not going to cover it but these bath houses have been built very simply there's no heat in them so they can just be closed down in the wintertime  and the pool we have the guy is giving very specific instructions to the town on how to care for the pool and they will be responsible for helping us at least this year to winterize the pool i'm not exactly sure what steps are taken but i know that we will do everything we can to make sure that this facility is maintained we're hoping that if there is a little some money left over from fundraising  that we might be able to put that into some kind of a fund with the town and that money could be used only to help with the maintenance of the pool we received a variance from the architectural access board and so we will continue the little walkway on cottage street and it will go up through the playground so that people who are walking down from the wellington school are coming from the south side of the pool will have a little walkway through the  we're glad you're the chairman of this committee because you really do help make things happen in belmont good well thank you very much i appreciate that