by Mark McDermott
The Manhattan Beach City Council inched closer to accepting Bay Club’s offer to build a public-serving aquatic center adjacent to the Manhattan Beach Country Club, but will also seek an estimate for what the cost would be for the city to build its own facility at the site.
After 15 months of discussions, two council members for the first time expressed outright support for entering an agreement with Bay Club to build an aquatic center that would prioritize public use but also serve the private fitness club’s members. The City has grappled in recent years with a dilemma regarding Begg Pool, its 80-year-old, much beloved but rapidly deteriorating public pool. Cost estimates for rebuilding Begg range from $28 million to $40 million. Community surveys have shown support for the facility but not the cost.
Councilperson Amy Howorth said that the City has made no progress in building a new aquatic center on its own, despite the glaring need and community desire for such a facility.
“We’ve been throwing our hands up since I’ve been on council, at least in terms of building a new pool, because it’s so darn expensive,” Howorth said. “We keep throwing our hands up and saying, ‘Well, we’re just going to have to put some gum in the cracks and hope it doesn’t end.’”
Howorth said taking Bay Club up on its offer — which includes a $1 million donation towards repairing Begg Pool, regardless of whether the City agrees to a new aquatic center proposal — at the very least represented a partial solution to the City’s dilemma.
“It’s more water for people to use,” she said. “I, for one, would support moving forward.”
The proposed site is a city-owned parking lot next to the MB Country Club, which Bay Club owns and operates.
Mayor Pro Tem Joe Franklin was also ready to move forward with the proposal. “It’s a solid solution,” Franklin said.
Bay Club, which operates over 100 pools at its properties nationwide and currently has15 to 20 pools under construction, believes it can build an aquatic facility on the property for $8 million to $12 million because private section construction costs are cheaper. Bay Club doesn’t face the constraints — such as prevailing wage requirements — that a public agency like the City of Manhattan Beach does. The company’s preferred design option would be to build two pools, a 25 yard pool similar to Begg, with a sloping depth from 4.5 feet to 6 feet deep, and a smaller, 20 yard recreation pool with a depth from 2.5 to 3.5 feet.
A council majority stopped short of supporting the proposal. Their primary concerns were a loss of programming control, higher fee structures for pool use, and the combination of increased activity and less available parking in the area. Part of Begg’s popularity is the City’s programming and staff (particularly recreation supervisor Jesus Sandoval, who oversees the pool) and its low cost, which is $3 for residents, and $5 for non-residents. Bay Club has promised to mimic City programming but will use its own staff, and fees would be $15 for residents, $10 for seniors 70 and over, youth 12 and under, and something higher for non-residents. The Bay Club fee would give users daylong full access to its fitness facilities in the area, including across Rosecrans Avenue in El Segundo and in Redondo Beach’s King Harbor, but not the Country Club itself.
Mayor David Lesser expressed gratitude to Bay Club for the offer but said his concerns stopped him short from fully supporting the proposal.
“I have concerns about loss of community programming as it’s been described, and I am concerned about the costs,” he said. “The fact of the matter is, we have some residents of our community that will be challenged to afford the costs that are being proposed at the new pool site. That is a concern for me, particularly because notwithstanding all these benefits, this pool would be built on public land.”
The idea of some kind of City-sponsored program to help subsidize the costs for the increased fees was brought up repeatedly. The City staff report said that no model exists in other cities for such a subsidy program, but that it could be explored.
Councilperson Nina Tarnay expressed concern about entering a long-term agreement with a private company to operate a partly public facility.
“This is a very difficult, challenging issue that our city has really explored for years, probably decades at this point, and there are no easy solutions,” she said. “Either we pay for our own pool, and undertake paying for it — if we can’t stomach being wedded long term to a party that we may not have as much control over.”
Councilperson Steve Charelian, who is the City of Manhattan Beach’s former finance director, said the City had the financial wherewithal to build its own pool. He said Measure MMB, the sales tax increase that voters approved that will generate $5.9 million annually, was intended for infrastructure projects. “This fits into that bill,” he said, suggesting that building at the proposed site would likely be cheaper than rebuilding at the more difficult Begg Pool site.
“So it’s within reach if the City wants to do something at that location,” Charelian said. “We need to give Jesus [Sandoval] and all our staff a new project and a new pool to program for the next generation to come and have control of. I think we have that responsibility to the residents and taxpayers of this town.”
Howorth argued that the choice was not between Begg Pool, or whatever the City could itself build to replace it, and the proposed new aquatic center.
“This is in addition to. It doesn’t replace… We don’t lose anything except potentially the use of that land for something else,” Howorth said. “But we make revenue from leasing, and we don’t pay anything… We are not operating a pool. We are not providing programming. It is simply additional water.”
Howorth, a former MBUSD board trustee, also once again expressed disappointment with the school district for not collaborating with the City. MBUSD last year passed a $250 million school bond for infrastructure improvements. Begg Pool is on MBUSD land.
“I have strong feelings about Begg Pool and the fact that there were so many dedicated residents who wanted to collaborate,” Howorth said, referencing a community group that tried to bring attention to the need for an upgraded facility. “I don’t think there’s anybody in this town who’s been a bigger component or driver of collaboration with the school district than myself…And we’ve had a brick wall. There’s no collaboration. And that angers me. Because we’ve missed an opportunity.”
Tarnay, who suggested a survey to find out if residents would go to the proposed aquatic center with the higher fee structure, said the direction the council takes will hinge on what the community wants.
“Our residents are going to have to decide, do we want to pony up the money and build it ourselves, or do we want to get married and be in a long term relationship with Bay Club?” she said.
Few members of the public expressed opinions at Tuesday’s meeting, in contrast to a big turnout regarding the issue at the September 4 council meeting. None spoke during the agenda item itself. Resident Laura Dotson, who swims at Begg Pool, voiced concerns during the early public comment portion of the meeting.
“Bay Club is a private entity, and our community pool is a public resource,” she said. “The goal of government is to support and provide services for the community. For a private enterprise, the goal is to profit. And we just have a wonderful staff…..I’m there four days a week, and every day I’m there, the pool is filled with community members. In the class I’m in, it’s mostly older people who, if we convert to a more privatized model,
there are real financial concerns.”
Lesser expressed concern that Bay Club is owned by private equity and could one day “flip” its properties. He again expressed thanks to Bay Club for the offer but suggested the proposal would also benefit the company.
“This would be positive for our community, insofar as the Bay Club pays for construction and operation and provides the City with lease revenue,” the mayor said. “It would also be, frankly, a win for the Bay Club. They would have additional water, which would add to their valuation, to the extent they were exploring a sale at some point.”
Lesser said he sided with Tarnay and Charelian in their desire to explore the option of the City building its own pool on the site, but he also supported Howorth’s desire that Bay Club continue to move forward in refining its proposal.
“Where I come down is supporting the two tracks which Councilmember Tarnay and Councilmember Charelian bring up — moving forward with the Bay Club facility, but also giving direction to staff to explore what would be a city constructed facility, which we may ultimately determine is simply not feasible from a cost standpoint,” Lesser said. “But I agree with the idea of the two tracks.”
Moving forward would include Bay Club paying for a parking study and furthering actual design work on the aquatic facility. Lesser asked if Bay Club would be willing to continue if the City were to take such a two-track approach.
“Yes, of course,” said Pete Jones, the Bay Club’s Executive Vice President of Construction and Development for Southern California.
But some of the earlier comments seemed to have drawn the ire of Jones, who is also a co-founder of Bay Club with a 40 year history within the company. Jones said he came to the meeting thinking he just wanted to be available to answer questions, but now he wanted to make a brief statement.
“The Bay Club company, our culture is extremely important to us,” Jones said. “One of the core values of that culture is philanthropy. And be there no mistake about it, our offer is pure philanthropy, and loaded with risk, which we welcomingly assume. Because we are a part of this community, and we intend to be a part of this community and we want to be a partner. We live here. There is no other reason why anybody would offer $8 million to $10 million. And I don’t know this for a fact, but I would be very surprised if in all these United States there are very many municipal pools that are profit making.”
“We would be subsidizing this facility for probably the length of the lease.
If, for those people who might think that we are rubbing our hands together, we think this is a huge profit making opportunity, they’re missing the point. This is philanthropy, just as the $1 million that we’ve offered to help subsidize the construction or the renovation of the Begg Pool is.”
The council voted unanimously to pursue the two track approach. A cost estimate for the City to build the pool will be performed by a consultant for a cost of $5,000 to $10,000 and according to staff will be completed within three months.
