For local swimmers, The Wellness Complex's pool has no replacement

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct the time of the fire alarm, and the size designation of the pool.

LACONIA — Since a devastating fire caused the closure of The Wellness Complex in late November, employees and members have been waiting to find out when — or if — the facility will reopen. Among the anxious-in-waiting are competitive swimmers, for whom the North Main Street fitness center was like an oasis in a region otherwise bereft of lap pools.

The Wellness Complex has been in operation since 2018. The facility was previously known as the Laconia Athletic and Swim Club and, prior to that, a YMCA.

Much has changed in the local fitness landscape since the building was dedicated as the Laconia YMCA in 1957. Several small and medium-sized gyms have opened throughout the city and the Lakes Region, and large competitors, such as Fit Focus and Planet Fitness, have set up shop nearby.

None of those newcomers could compete with what the North Main Street facility offers: a semi-Olympic-sized swimming pool.

Of course, there’s no shortage of places for people to swim in the Lakes Region during the warm months, but for competitive swimmers, and those who want to engage in the sport year-round, an indoor lap pool is a necessity.

Laconia lost, at least temporarily, its swimming pool in the early morning hours of Nov. 27 of last year. At 1:24 a.m. that day, an alarm sounded, and even though the fire department, located directly across the street, responded almost immediately, the damage to the structure couldn’t be halted.

The fire seems to have started somewhere in the ceiling above the pool. Firefighters attempted to fight the fire from the interior, but had to retreat when the ceiling began to collapse on them. They put out the fire from the exterior, bringing it under control in about four hours, but the portion of the building that contained the pool was destroyed.

The building was unoccupied at the time of the fire, and no firefighters were injured.

Now, about two months later, there’s no clear timeline for when the facility will re-open — or even if it will at all.

“As of now that is still our intention, that is the message we would like to convey to the community,” said George Kalil, club manager of The Wellness Complex. “Unfortunately, things are still up in the air.”

Kalil said his company has inventoried and itemized their lost equipment and have been in conversation with their insurance company, and the piece of the puzzle which remains is the cost of building an indoor, Olympic-sized pool in 2025.

“No contractors have been there to quote anything, we’re not sure what the total cost of the damage is,” Kalil said. Once that cost is known, he can compare that to the coverage available under the insurance policy to see if rebuilding is feasible.

Small but growing

It’s not a sport that frequently grabs headlines, but Laconia High School does have a swim team. Krin Monterose is the LHS swim coach, and she said there are currently six swimmers on her team. It’s a small team, but with steady growth over recent years.

“This is not a sport that you typically just fall into,” Monterose said, though her team does have two seniors who decided to dip their toes in this year for their first time.

On the other end of the spectrum, she has some athletes who have invested many years in the sport, and have seen success as a result. Dustin Couture, for example, has already qualified for four events at the Division II state championships.

The situation with The Wellness Complex has made for a complicated season, Monterose said. The fire happened right at the beginning of the season, causing the team to scramble in search of a place to practice.

“We were actually pretty lucky,” Monterose said. “We’ve only missed a week of practice at this point.”

The LHS team has to travel via school bus to Capital City Sports & Fitness in Concord to practice. It’s a 40-minute drive, one way, and on practice days the athletes leave at 2:30 p.m. and return around 6:15 p.m. Due to that time commitment and other scheduling concerns, the team has only been able to practice once per week. Prior to the fire, they practiced twice weekly.

“I think everyone’s bummed that we’re one day a week, but I think everyone’s glad that we found a pool that can take us,” Monterose said.

It’s certainly better than no pool at all, but there’s a big difference between one practice per week and two. Monterose said it’s difficult to fine-tune the technical aspects of an athlete’s form with only one session per week, and individual endurance also doesn’t develop without multiple practices. Her more dedicated swimmers are also members of a swim club, which allows them additional pool time. But for athletes who have concurrent interests or commitments, it’s going to be difficult for them to sustain progress.

“You just don’t have enough practice,” Monterose said.

Her bigger worry, though, is what the long-term ripple effect will be.

“I worry because you can’t just re-do a pool overnight. This process is going to take them a very long time. I hope that next year we can continue going down to Concord if The Wellness Complex doesn’t get the pool finished by then, or even find another pool that will accommodate us,” Monterose said. “I just wish it could be rebuilt overnight, but that’s not going to happen.”

In a floating pattern

The longer the pool sits in a burned-out shell, the more damaging it will be to local swim programs. Monterose said her hope for the future of the LHS Swim Team is rooted in the current membership of the Lakes Region Wavemakers, a club swim team.

“Club teams help build high school teams,” Monterose said.

The Wavemakers have been around since 1982, according to Katie Chevalier, the club’s head coach. Chevalier grew up swimming, which “made me the person that I am today,” she said.

Today she is a physical therapist who schedules her private practice around the Wavemakers' schedule. “I’ve built my life around making this swim team work,” she said, and she wants to make the benefits of swimming available to the next generation of athletes, including her own daughter.

“For many kids, swimming is a special sport. It’s a sport they can do not only when they’re kids but for their lifetime,” Chevalier said. It helps to build aerobic capabilities for other sports, while typically avoiding any impact-related injuries.

“Not only that, but when you think of the safety of living in a place like the Lakes Region, these kids should be able to know how to swim, that’s a huge concern.”

Also concerning is whether the club’s current membership will remain stable without a local pool.

This isn’t the first time the Wavemakers have had to navigate choppy waters. In 2014, the Laconia Athletic and Swim Club closed abruptly, also on Thanksgiving weekend, but it was due to a financial catastrophe instead of fire. The Wavemakers were able to train at the Gunstock Inn’s pool from 2014 until The Wellness Complex opened, but Chevalier said the inn’s ownership has since changed, and the new management wants to reserve the pool for guests.

“At the time, the Wavemakers were floating around, like we are now,” Chevalier said. This season, she said the team has been making a “long haul” to Colby-Sawyer College in New London, about an hour’s drive for most members, for practice.

“That’s not ideal, especially with little kids and getting to bed at a reasonable time at night.” Chevalier said her club’s members range in age from 6 through high school.

She is currently working with Plymouth State University to try to secure pool time closer to home, which looks possible if they can make do with just a couple of lanes. They will have to rotate different groups of kids on different days, but it’s better than nothing.

Like Monterose, Chevalier said she’s worried about what the sudden inconvenience and expense will mean for the long-term health of the club. Securing access to pools, after they had paid for a full season at The Wellness Complex, has necessitated extra fundraising for The Wavemakers.

“It’s very difficult for parents to make this work,” Chevalier said. “We were able to raise about $6,000 so we could finish the season, but that just gets us to the end of the season.

"It’s going to be difficult to figure out where our team is going to go from here. It would be amazing if some other pools worked out in the meantime.”

Kalil said he appreciates the special concern swimmers have about the future of The Wellness Complex.

“We know that we are a one-of-a-kind facility in our area,” Kalil said. “For that reason, we know that pushing forward is very important. We know it’s worth it for us to be there. Bottom line comes down to the cost of reconstruction. If we can do it, we will do it.”