Vernon's New Horowitz Pool Set For Debut

VERNON, CT — Vernon's three supervised public swimming venues are set to open for the 2025 season Monday and that means the long-awaited debut of the new Horowitz pool at Henry Park.

Lifeguards will also be at the Community Pool at Center 375 and at Newhoca Park at Bolton Lake. The hours will be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., seven days a week.

Mayor Dan Champagne offered a sneak peek of the new Horowitz pool Tuesday evening with a host of town officials and the new lifeguard crew.

During the event, two Vernon girls were able to be the first ones in when they happened to stop by.
Sydney Kyc, 10, and Maya Marroni, 9, who will be fifth-graders at Center Road School in the
fall, said the pool was "great."

Champagne said he was looking forward to seeing the pool packed with children and families when it opens, just like it was when he was a boy growing up in Rockville.

Daily admission is $3 for children 12 and younger, and $5 for people 13 and older. Season
passes are available to Vernon residents only for $30 for children 12 and younger and $50 for
people 13 and older. There is also a family pass available to Vernon residents for $120. It
covers a family of four, which is one adult and three children or two adults and two children.
Additional children within the household can be included on the pass for $15 each.

Champagne said there's a new twist with the new pool — members of the Vernon Senior Center can swim from 11 a.m. to noon Monday, Wednesday and Friday by just showing a membership card.

In early April 2023, the Vernon Town Council voted to award a $1.247 million contract to Juliano's Pools to replace Horowitz Pool. A pool with a locally fashioned commercial strength liner and in-house clubhouse renovations will maintain the traditional look of the venerable aquatic facility while bringing it into the 21st century, officials have said.

Horowitz Pool opened to the public in August 1953 and was in service through 2019. In the early 1990s, the town undertook a renovation project "to extend the pool's useful life."

Town officials said that Parks and Recreation and Department of Public Works staff members spent "thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours" maintaining and improving the pool over the past several years, but the structure aged "beyond its useful life."

Since 2018, Champagne, council members and town staffers have examined a variety of options, including replacing Horowitz Pool. In addition to a splash pad, another idea was a year-round indoor aquatic facility and a seasonal outdoor concrete pool. The projected cost of the indoor facility and outdoor concrete pool was in the millions of dollars.

In November 2022, requests for proposals were sent out and the town conducted a series of walk-throughs of the pool site for all contractors interested in submitting bids. A plan from Juliano's, submitted in December 2022, won out and the funding was approved four months later, officials said.
The pool liner is 60 mils thick, according to pool company owner Brian Juliano. A residential pool liner is 20 mils thick and a cold water wetsuit is about 6.5 mills thick.

Champagne said the proposal from Juliano's is a "cost-effective way to replace Horowitz Pool."

The projected lifespan of the 60-mil pool liner is about a decade years and rips and tears can be easily repaired through a process called thermal membrane welding, which leaves the repair as strong or stronger than the liner, Juliano said.

The project was paid for using American Rescue Plan Act grant funds.