Joyce Marcel is a reporter and columnist for The Commons, where she regularly covers politics, homelessness, economic development issues, and the arts. And the Colonial Pool.
BRATTLEBORO-I was swimming laps at the Keene YMCA pool one day last week when a gentleman I did not recognize turned and asked me, “Do you think the Colonial Pool will ever open again?”
That’s when I realized that I have been asked some version of the same question every single time I swim.
Maybe people ask me because, when the Colonial Motel and Spa on Putney Road closed in April, taking the two indoor pools and its members down with it, I wrote an elegy to swimming there [“Ode to a pool,” Column, April 15]. I wrote how much my pool membership meant to me, how much I needed lap swimming in my life, and how deeply I treasured the pool community.
I’m not alone in this.
“I have been going three days a week to the Y in Keene with three friends, but it definitely isn’t the same,” said Kate Dodge, the retired co-owner and founder of the Putney Winery. “The drive is long, the schedule is difficult, the classes aren’t what I need and, most importantly, our community isn’t there.”
Dodge has been a member of the Colonial for 13 years, and she participates in water aerobics classes three or more days a week.
“Aside from the obvious physical benefits of that exercise, it was a place where I found a community of people who came from numerous different towns in the area and different social communities,” Dodge said.
“I made friends who I only saw at the pool and most likely never would have met otherwise, and we became a caring and fluctuating group,” she continued. “People came and went, but new people were always welcomed with the same friendship.
“Now that it’s closed, I see very few of those friends. I have lost one of the most important pieces of my daily life.”
* * *
It is unconscionable that Brattleboro is now a town without an all-year indoor swimming pool, but that is where we are right now.
It’s not like we members did not know things were shaky back in April, when we lost the pools.
We knew there were deep and expensive problems. The showers hadn’t had hot water for weeks. The rickety A-line structure over the multipurpose pool leaked. The roof over the exercise equipment leaked. Some idiot had thrown water on the electric heater in the women’s sauna and put it out of commission.
Locker doors had signs saying “Broken. Do not use.” The sign on the women’s steam room warned that “large pieces of ceiling are falling.”
But we — and by “we,” I mean over 400 pool members — ignored the problems (OK, maybe we griped about the problems) because summer and winter, we could swim there.
On April 2, they did fix the ladies’ sauna, but then things went from bad to worse. On April 7, Green Mountain Power shut off electricity to the motel complex, including the pool, for not paying the electric bill.
“Closed for an unexpected issue,” we members were told on April 8.
Then the power went back on, and we all continued swimming as if it was our natural-born right. Which it was, in a way, because membership in the pool was not cheap, and many of us paid by the year.
And then, on April 10, the pool was closed “for an indefinite time.”
The staff was let go, our memberships vaporized, the motel was closed and emptied, and the brand new Afghan restaurant in front was closed too. Welcome to the USA, guys! (They, better equipped to survive disaster, immediately started a successful GoFundMe campaign and are now happily serving Afghan food up at the Royal Diner on Route 9.)
* * *
The Colonial Motel and Spa, according to the Brattleboro Town Clerk’s office, is valued at $2.5 million. Its yearly property tax is $83,608. It occupies 8 acres on Putney Road, and it has, for some reason, two freshwater wells.
The property quickly sold to Dinesh Patel, a real estate entrepreneur from Springfield, Massachusetts.
Patel and his business partner, Vid Mitta, were named Top Entrepreneur in 2021 by BusinessWest, the business journal of western Massachusetts, for their work developing Tower Square in Springfield. Patel owns properties — including many motels — in three states.
I met with Patel two weeks ago. He is a charming and energetic man. While he asked that our meeting be off the record, I can report that he knows the hotel and motel business inside out.
But he appears to be baffled by the intense outcry over the closure of the Colonial pools.
I think he thought he was buying a motel with a little pool where frazzled parents could drop off their kids while they took a breather on a weekend holiday. I don’t think he ever anticipated buying such a passionately loved and needed town resource.
First, Patel concentrated on refurbishing the motel and getting it open again. He’s done that.
He is now in the process of getting estimates for the repair work that must be done on the pools before they can reopen. It is taking a long time. This being summer, contractors are slammed. And holiday weekends are also getting in the way.
If the estimates, when they are all collected, come in too high, as may of us fear, he may decide to fill in the pools and take his land in a different direction.
* * *
I believe these pools and the large community they serve — especially seniors — are too precious to be managed for profit.
Babies and children learned to swim in those pools. Differently abled men and woman floated there in peace. People with compromised mobility could feel their bodies naturally moving and performing motion in the water. The Special Olympics-bound Windham Waves trained there.
The water aerobics folks formed tight-knit communities. People learned how to walk again after knee replacements there. It was an important part of many people’s physical therapy. The older I get, the more I realize that swimming is keeping me alive and working well into my 80s.
* * *
So I have done what I can to help. I wrote to the former board chair of the Keene YMCA asking if the organization would be interested in buying the Colonial pools and having a satellite system in Brattleboro, should Patel be amenable.
They were wonderfully sympathetic.
“I’m truly sorry to hear about the recent events at the Colonial,” wrote back attorney Elana Baron. “I can only imagine how upsetting this has been for everyone who uses the pool.”
The interim board chair, Michael Blume, wrote, “I’m sorry to hear about the closure of the Colonial pool and the challenges it has certainly created!”
But it turns out that my request turned out to be too complicated.
“Brattleboro is outside of our service area,” Blume wrote. “That means the idea of expanding to or operating in that area comes with more complexities. Since Brattleboro falls within another service area, our YMCA is limited in what we can offer without approvals from multiple groups within our Y movement.”
There are still YMCAs in Bellows Falls and Greenfield, Massachusetts, to contact.
Next, I called Brattleboro Town Manager John Potter. He first pointed out there was no money in the budget to buy and manage the pools. Then he said I should write a proposal and bring it to the Selectboard. That could take months, and again, we have no money to back up our proposal.
We — the members — are more than willing to fundraise if a new management structure could be established and if Patel would be willing to sell.
But for us swimmers right now, the choices are grim. We can always swim in a lake or pond for the next few months. I’ve done that, and it’s wonderfully freeing. I felt like that orca that got sprung from SeaWorld in that movie Free Willy.
But colder weather will be here before we know it.
* * *
Springfield, Vermont, has a lovely pool at the Edgar May Health and Recreation Center, but it is 35 highway miles away. Franklin County’s YMCA, in Greenfield, Massachusetts, is 24 miles away. Keene’s marvelous pool is 15.5 miles away.
“I joined the Colonial Pool in April of 1996,” says another member, retired civil engineer Louise Legouis. “The pool has continued to provide me grounding and wellness. The pool helps smooth out the edges. It saved my life. People might argue it’s expensive. For $700 a year I got fitness, mental health care, socializing and drug-free living.
“I live with the concept of upstream wellness. It’s a new expression that means keeping people from falling into a stream of diseases. The pool is a place like that. It’s very important to have vibrant system of wellness places in small towns, especially when the health care system is struggling. $700 is a bargain!”
And another lap swimmer, Newfane resident Bobbe Ragouzeos, summed it up this way.
“The water is our magical place and swimming is our super power,” she says. “The Colonial pool was our community. It may not have been a perfect aquatic center, but we all loved it, flaws and all.”
This Voices column by Joyce Marcel was written for The Commons.
This piece, published in print in the Voices section or as a column in the news sections, represents the opinion of the writer. In the newspaper and on this website, we strive to ensure that opinions are based on fair expression of established fact. In the spirit of transparency and accountability, The Commons is reviewing and developing more precise policies about editing of opinions and our role and our responsibility and standards in fact-checking our own work and the contributions to the newspaper. In the meantime, we heartily encourage civil and productive responses at [email protected].