The Astoria Aquatic Center’s motto, It’s Time to Swim, was never more appropriate than Sunday afternoon at the Splash Bash.

A crowd of pool enthusiasts, city officials, volunteers and well-wishers were on hand for the party, which both kicked off the summer swim season and heralded a new beginning for the financially stressed Aquatic Center, which had been threatened with closure after its annual subsidy from the city reached $420,000.

Noting the city is facing tough financial times, which led to the decision to cancel the Aquatic Center’s subsidy for the coming fiscal year, Mayor Willis Van Dusen told the crowd it was never the city’s intent to close the center down.

He and City Manager Paul Benoit urged the community to support the Aquatic Center, which is embarking on a new course with guidance from Portland consultant JP Moss. “If we stick together we can move mountains,” Van Dusen said.

Guest of honor at the party was Freda Englund, a huge supporter of the Aquatic Center over the years, who was celebrating her 97th birthday Sunday. At Van Dusen’s invitation, she took out her harmonica and played “You Are My Sunshine” to great applause. When she finished, the crowd sang Happy Birthday to her.

Freda Englund, who is the mother of Astoria businessman Jon Englund, donated the huge mural that covers the south wall of the Aquatic Center, which opened its doors in June 1998. Her donation was in honor of her late husband, Axel Englund. “We wouldn’t have that artwork otherwise,” Van Dusen said.

The next highlight of the Splash Bash came a few minutes later. After purchasing the first quarterly pass of the season, Van Dusen kept his promise to leap into the pool wearing a suit and tie and holding an open umbrella. The crowd roared as he took the plunge from the highest available point, the lifeguard chair, and then was “rescued” by lifeguards. The Astoria Fire Department was also on hand, just in case.

Swift workLaying the groundwork for Sunday’s big celebration over the last couple of weeks have been two citizens’ groups – the Astoria Aquatic Center Taskforce and The Patrons of the Aquatic Center – and the consultant, JP Moss, and his team of marketing and training experts.

All have been committed to keeping the facility open and Moss has further pledged to find a way for it to break even financially. That would be quite an achievement. The Aquatic Center required a $420,000 subsidy from the city during this fiscal year. The current efforts to breathe new life into the Aquatic Center began after City Manager Paul Benoit recommended closing it down to help plug a $1 million hole in the city’s 2009-10 budget.

“Turning the marketing machine on. That’s what we’re doing,” Moss said last week. He had no time to waste. He had just 36 hours to get new programs and activities scheduled and printed “so the schedules could land in every school child’s hand” before the school year ended June 5 or June 8, depending on the school district.

“Summer for a swimming pool is like a retail store’s Christmas season,” Moss explained. “You either make it in the summer or you struggle the rest of the year.”

Thanks to a huge outpouring of community support, the Moss team beat the end of school deadline. Between 2,000 and 3,000 kids in Astoria and surrounding areas got the word.

Open more hoursNow, the outreach continues. Moss said one volunteer determined there are 99 churches in this area, and made it her mission to contact every single one of them about the new swimming programs. Teams are also distributing Aquatic Center fliers to campgrounds, Moss said, and to hotels and motels.

Thanks to another volunteer, the manager of the Astoria Safeway is allowing flyers to be put into customers’ grocery bags as they check out. “We can change the message every week; one week swim lessons, next week pool rentals, next week a free swim coupon,” Moss said.

Getting patrons, now known as guests, into the Aquatic Center is the first step. Making sure they feel welcome and have a safe and enjoyable experience after they get there is just as important.

“We are taking a complete look at how a consumer, a customer, a guest, comes into our facility – in the past I don’t think it’s been great customer service,” Moss said. As an example he cited a lap swimmer on lunch break who needs to just get in the pool and do his laps. That person used to get stuck in line, leaving little time to swim before heading back to work. Now there’s a system to “fly them through” and get them in and out, he said.

Moss described the old style as “Stay away, we can’t fit you in.” Hours of operation were limited, and so were programs, the fee schedule was complicated and people had to stand in line to get in and to get a locker. It was a single activity program facility.

That’s all changed. Fee schedules have been simplified and the Aquatic Center is now a multi-program facility with various activities going on at the same time. Now, Moss said, at many times of day, instead of just having an activity like lap swim, there will be lap swim, swim team, open play swim, swim lessons and water exercise all happening at the same time.

“So now a lap swimmer can come from 5 a.m. to 8 at night. They might not always have the whole pool, they might have only one lane of that pool, but that’s a major benefit. For open play swim – there used to be times where you can come, randomly. Now you can come any time from 1 to 8, so you don’t have to really think anymore, ‘when can I go?’ During those times there may be features that you get to use, so maybe the slide will be open at certain times, maybe the deep pool will be open at certain times. What it did is allow the consumer to have more opportunities to come to the facility.”

Everyone welcomeOne change that may not sit well with Astoria residents, who are still paying back a 20-year bond measure that funded the Aquatic Center, is the new policy that eliminates higher fees for customers who live outside the city limits.

Moss explained the Aquatic Center must be a regional facility to survive financially and charging out-of-towners more could discourage them from using the pool.

“If we don’t get the consumer outside of Astoria, this facility will close,” he said. “We’re functionally bankrupt right now. We have no money to run the facility, so at some point, the people in Astoria have to say, ‘well, do we want to have a closed facility that we still have to pay bond money for however long is left on the bond, or do we want to have a facility that the revenue of the people coming in from out of town is helping to support the entire program.

“And we need more than our community of Astoria to support this particular facility and so rather than putting up a barrier to say, no, don’t come, and charge an extra tax – and I understand how someone could say, ‘well they should,’ but the bottom line is if they don’t come because that barrier is there, then the pool’s done anyway.”

Checking operationsIn addition to marketing and programming, the Moss team concentrated on operations and especially safety.

“Any time you look at an aquatic facility, safety becomes paramount. You can have the greatest program in the world but if it’s not safe, that’s a whole different problem,” he said. His trainers provided the Aquatic Center’s staff with some additional training in CPR, emergency action plans and lifeguarding skills.

“Generally you teach a lifeguard for a pool not to guard the top inch of the water, the top three inches or outside the water, but you want to guard the whole water, whatever your zone is, and that would be from the bottom to the top of the pool,” he said.

Operations are also being streamlined. To ensure that programs, such as swimming lessons, have enough participants to be cost effective, classes with small enrollment would be combined with other programs. In the past, classes with just two students and an instructor were taught. Teaching that program wasn’t financially sound, Moss said, and contributed to the big deficit. “A lot of our changes have been these little tiny changes of how we operate and what our programs look like,” Moss said.

Other cost-saving measures include saving energy by turning out the interior lights at night, looking at covering pools at night to save power, possibly lowering the pool temperature by a quarter of a degree. Such small steps can save big bucks.

“So we’re looking at all areas, everything about the facility, as to how can we operate this facility in a different manner that would allow us to either be break-even, or plus-a-dollar, or minus-a-dollar, but right on that mark so we don’t need to rely on extra funds, whether it be from the city or elsewhere, that we can survive on our own. That’s the goal in operations.”

Needing supportMoss stressed that no matter what the consulting team puts in place, whether the Aquatic Center sinks or swims depends on support from the community.

“The idea is we’re kicking off the ‘save the pool’ campaign. What I’ve done is not save the pool, I’ve gotten us to the point where we can launch the save the pool campaign. That’s going to depend on ‘will the community come, will the community rally, will it buy swim passes, sign up for swim lessons, use our facility?'” Moss said. “And that will be the solution to the challenge.”

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