WOODLAND — A community pool for Woodland used to seem an ocean away. Finally, there may be just a few dozen laps left.
“If the community can step up and do everything they can, we’ll see it happen sooner than later,” said Benno Dobbe, president of the Woodland Community Swimming Pool Committee. “I predict that next year will be a huge year for fundraising.”
Decades in the making, the community pool would sit beside Horseshoe Lake inside a Columbia-Willamette YMCA. Those passing through Woodland on southbound Interstate 5 have no doubt seen the green and blue “future YMCA home” sign posted along the freeway.
“It’s so much more than a pool,” Dobbe said.
The land has been purchased. The Portland-based Y signed an operating agreement years ago. Conceptual designs have been drawn up. It’s just going to take a wave of support that has already been coming in steadily.
“It’s a shovel-ready project,” said Dobbe, who runs the Holland America Bulb Farm, famous for its annual Tulip Festival.
The pool committee is on the verge of a major announcement early next year. What that is, Dobbe won’t say. But it will be “quite meaningful,” he said.
In the meantime, a fundraising campaign is about to begin toward a $12.6 million goal to build Woodland’s YMCA. In the past year alone, the community pool group has raised more than $1 million in donations, pledges, gifts in kind and grants. Dobbe said that happened without a formal campaign.
“We are getting more and more volunteers who want to help — the community spirit is definitely there,” he said. “The fundraising done silently will start to become a snowball effect.”
Calling the YMCA more than a benefit for Woodland alone, Dobbe said the surrounding communities stand to benefit from the “perfect” location: along the lake, halfway between YMCAs in Longview and Vancouver, and down the road for communities like Amboy and Cougar.
Kalama, La Center and Ridgefield all stand to benefit, and they are definitely growing, Dobbe said.
It’s going to take that kind of wide-ranging community support to get the place built. If every man, woman and child just in Woodland were to shoulder the costs, it would take more than a thousand dollars each.
Getting outlying communities involved meant looking beyond just a local swimming pool. Adding weight rooms, event rooms and basketball courts will give the place a regional draw and a sustainable membership base.
“That’s what the YMCA was looking for,” Dobbe said. “Their name and reputation is a blessing for this community.”
The success of recent years comes after much finagling over a location and finances, but Dobbe was only interested in looking forward, not back.
“All of the unfortunate hurdles of the past, which were beyond our control, are no longer,” reads an upbeat line on the community pool committee’s website. “A facility 20 years later is still better than no facility at all!”
Instead of dwelling on the past, Dobbe provided a list of supporters and their feedback, such as Tim and Lee Welch’s comments: “P-o-o-l is just another place to put your money.”
“If we can build a school, we can build a pool,” said Woodland High School Athletic Director Paul Huddleston.
An informational meeting on the YMCA’s progress and plans for the future has been scheduled for 4 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Port of Woodland office at 115 Davidson Ave.
Visit woodlandymca.org or email info@woodlandymca.org to learn more or to donate time, materials or cash. Checks can be mailed to WCSPC at 1066 S. Pekin Road, Woodland, WA 98674.
