The roof replacement project at the Fernley Swimming Pool is expected to begin in late February, pending the close of a mandatory bid protest period, after the Fernley Swimming Pool General Improvement District Board of Trustees accepted a $1.16 million bid on Jan. 26.
The project has been about two years in the making, triggered by damage during a windstorm in 2024.
Although the exact start date wasn't determined as of last Friday, the pool will close around Feb. 17 and will most likely remain closed until sometime in June.
The need for the project dates back to a severe windstorm in 2024 that tore pieces of the metal roof off the building and scattered them across the surrounding fields.
"We were lucky nobody was here and nobody got hurt," said Suzanne Prouty, President of the Swimming Pool General Improvement District Board of Trustees.
At the time, the district brought in a repair company to evaluate whether the roof could be patched or needed full replacement, Pool Director Patrick Daniel said. He said a small 20- to 30-foot repair alone was estimated at $70,000, but the rest of the roof was also determined to be in poor condition.
"The metal panels are bolted directly into plywood with no water barrier," he said. "Over the decades, the plywood has deteriorated to where it's almost gone. The bolts are backing out and physically falling out."
Prouty said the district moved quickly to determine whether the storm damage was covered by insurance.
"Surprise, surprise, we weren't," she said. Instead, the insurer determined the deterioration was age-related.
That left the district with the choice to repair one section at a time or replace the entire roof. Daniel said repairing only the damaged portion would have led to replacing sections every few years.
The district hired an owner's representative, Jon Burhans of J.R. Builders, who has extensive experience managing public-works projects in Winnemucca. H&K Architects handled the design work. Daniel said the design process alone took more than a year.
"There were two stages," he said. "First, the initial design stage, what can we do, what do we want to do. Once that was like, we can do this, it probably costs this much, we went into the full design phase, which lasted probably four or six months."
The apparent winning bid is $1,161,000 from SB Builders of Carson City. The district received five bids, all within a narrow range, with the highest at $1,316,102. The Pool Trustees approved the bid on Jan. 26, which triggered the statutory protest period. Any competing bidder has five business days to file a protest, though doing so requires a $250,000 bond.
"If that happens, all bets are off," Daniel said. "We would have to stop and possibly rebid the whole project. But we don't expect it."
That leads to some of the uncertainty about the start date for the project, but Daniel and Prouty said they're looking at Feb. 17 as the tentative date the pool will close. The bid documents for the project were based on 140 days, which would take the project into June.
The contract includes a hard deadline tied to the last day of school on June 12.
"That's our hard line, to open the day after school ends," Daniel said.
The contract includes a $1,000-per-day liquidated-damages clause if the contractor fails to deliver the facility on time.
"We probably get 50 percent of our income in June and July," Daniel said. "If we're not able to open in time for summer, we'll have to sit down and look at how much money it's costing us."
There is a slim chance the pool could reopen earlier if interior work finishes ahead of schedule.
"By some miracle, we might actually have the pool opening in May," Daniel said. "But I would call that a miracle."
The project goes far beyond just replacing the metal roof. It includes the full replacement of the roof and the ceiling of the mezzanine, or pool area; replacing the HVAC ducting, upgraded lighting including pendant fixtures around the pool; replacement of the security system; and minor exterior lighting updates.
Daniel said the current security system is outdated and failing.
"It's old technology from the '90s," he said.
Before beginning the work on the roof and ceiling, the entire pool deck will need to be scaffolded to bring in equipment, which Daniel said will take two to three weeks.
"We realized the scaffolding was going to take longer than expected, so it sped up the project to give us more buffer before summer," Daniel said.
Once the scaffolding is in place, crews can begin interior work even if the exterior roof must wait until after summer.
"They could do the roof after Labor Day if they had to," Prouty said.
Daniel acknowledged that the timing of the project creates unavoidable disruptions.
The high school swim team won't be able to use the pool this season, and Fernley High School Athletic Director Paul Sullivan said they're trying to work an arrangement for the team to practice in Fallon.
"We kind of left the swim team homeless," Daniel said. "But once we get the roof on, they'll have a home for the next 30 years."
The closure will also affect end-of-year school events, The pool will most likely be unable to host the schools' end-of-year parties. Swim lessons will also be canceled.
"We'll have a bunch of Fernley kids without swim lessons right before summer, which is not ideal," Daniel said.
Staffing will be another challenge. Without spring operations, the district won't have its usual pipeline of trained lifeguards heading into the busy season.
"I won't have enough lifeguards at the start of summer," Daniel said. "I'll be scrambling just to hire new lifeguards. If anybody's interested in being a lifeguard, let me know. Classes are free for locals."
The money for the project comes from the Pool District's reserves. Prouty and Daniel said because GIDs generally cannot borrow money, the district must save for major capital projects.
"Any money that we do not spend over the course of the year goes into our cash account, saving for these types of projects," Daniel said. "So effectively, we penny pinch year by year, saving as much as we can. It then goes into this cash account for us to pay for these large projects.
The Fernley Swimming Pool District operates as a General Improvement District (GID), which was formed before the City of Fernley incorporated. That means the district is independent of the city, county and state.
"We're entirely unto ourselves under the direction of the Board of Trustees," Daniel said. "If we had a fire, if we had a failure of any kind, if a drunk person drove through the building with a bulldozer, us the Fernley pool, have to put ourselves back together. No one's coming to our help."
Daniel said he's optimistic the project can be completed on time without the supply-chain delays that affected the district's recent park project.
"Our park project ran into a problem because a good chunk of it got stuck in a port in Hamburg or something like that," Daniel said. "We lost like a month or something with our irrigation system sitting in the port. This should be straightforward. Knock on wood, I don't expect any major delays."
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