Community Corner
Lindberg Steps Aside – But Not Away – from Pool
Project leader takes you into the recesses of the Depression-era bathhouse at Tosa Pool.
Denise Lindberg has her own hardhat.
She needs it to supervise construction of the new Tosa Pool at Hoyt Park, a project she has lived and breathed for the last four years as executive director of Friends of Hoyt Park & Pool.
"I'm often on the site three times a day," Lindberg said, explaining her personalized headgear. When she hasn't been tramping the construction zone in muddy boots, she's spent countless more hours on the phone with contractors and subcontractors, or driving thither and yon to check out furnishings and light fixtures and the thousand things that go into modernizing a facility that's three-quarters of a century old.
Find out what's happening in Wauwatosawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
On May 9, Lindberg will step aside as executive director and turn over the job to Tami Schlickman, who until now has been the non-profit group's finance officer.
"When it became obvious this thing was going to be built, it also became clear we needed someone with the expertise to run it," Lindberg said. "Tami was the Hoyt accountant for four years."
Find out what's happening in Wauwatosawith free, real-time updates from Patch.
"I've had about 30 years of experience in non-profit and for-profit, and owned businesses," Schlickman said. "My experience is more organizational and operational.
"We looked at what the future of the pool needed. As things started ramping up, I became more of the operational manager."
Schlickman will become paid staff of the operational pool; for Lindberg, it was all volunteer work.
Lindberg will by no means be leaving the project. She will continue as president of the governing board of the pool group, and it will be hard to get her to turn over that hardhat.
In the beginning of the pool project, it was natural for Lindberg to take up the roles of community organizer and fundraiser. She was experienced and well known for earlier efforts such as creating the Neighborhood Association Council, bringing together Wauwatosa's more than 20 individual neighborhood groups.
But when her dream of a rebuilt and revitalized Hoyt Pool, an $8 million proposition, started toward reality, Lindberg also took an engineer's keen interest and developed an architect and historian's eye in managing construction.
Consequently, Lindberg sees Tosa Pool a little differently than will most of the children and parents who will rush to the water features of the brand-new pool, with its zero-depth entry, its slides and lap lanes.
But while the pool is cool and the whole point of the project, in Lindberg's eyes it is just an exercise in modern design and engineering. Her heart's passion is for the Depression-era bathhouse and all it contains.
"It was built by professionals under the WPA," or Works Progress Administration, she said. "The old pool was the (Civilian Conservation Corps). A thousand men with shovels."
Those who remember the pool, which closed in 2003, likely remember the bathhouse as a wet, crowded, slightly dingy place smelling strongly of chlorine. Many of the finest features of the old building were hidden behind racks of steel changing baskets.
"Remediation and reconstruction of the bathhouse cost $1.5 million," Lindberg said. "But we knew we had a jewel. When we had our first fundraiser here three years ago, it was such a mess, we brought in some ficus trees and whatnot to try to hide things.
"But people kept asking us, 'Oh, can we have a corporate meeting here, will it be available for rental?'"
Lindberg took great care to preserve what she could of the bathhouse and to update the rest in styles and colors appropriate to the design. While some of the unique overhead lights, made to look like windows, were lost to make way for better insulation, missing wall sconces are being replaced with custom-made ones.
And as much as Lindberg loves the public part of the bathhouse, there is one place that turns her up another notch.
"My favorite part is the basement," she said, grinning in anticipation of giving a tour.
Another $500,ooo worth of state of the art water filtration, chemical and sanitation treatment epuiptment, including ultarviolet bacteria control, has been tucked into the labyrinth beneath the bathhouse.
There are so many pumps and lines and filters and valves, plumber Jeffrey Saxe, a Wauwatosa native who works for Bohmann and Vick Plumbing, has set up an office in what was the headquarters of the pool's youth staff back in the day. It's walls are still covered with their annual testimonials.
"I just think this stuff is so cool," Lindberg said. "There's so little chlorine in this system, you won't even notice it.
"People will rejoice at the pool, but I think it's good for them to know there's a lot of important money down here and underground that makes it what it is."
The light, soaring loft of the Great Hall will ring with the Friends' grand-opening gala on May 27, just before the public opening on Memorial Day. The event is from 6 to 9 p.m., and tickets will be $48, dinner included.
And yes, you will get to see the basement.
Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.