Pioneer Valley Fiberglass Pools & Spas President & CEO Clancy Kaye with pool lifeguard Jillian Battles.
Reminder Publishing photo by Amy Porter
WESTFIELD — Clancy Kaye, president and CEO of Pioneer Valley Fiberglass Pools & Spas has opened one of its pools to Westfield residents as a way to beat the heat and as a thank you to the city.
Right now, the offer is limited to Westfield residents. “Westfield has been very good to me — it’s a great community to do business in,” said Kaye, who is from Holyoke.
He said although Westfield has spray parks, there are no public pools in Westfield.
“There’s nothing like jumping into a pool,” he said.
He went on to say, “It’s a bit of an experiment,” noting that he thought about opening up the pool last year, but it was too late in the season. This year, he hired a lifeguard, upped his liability insurance. “We have it, let’s do it,” he said.
At first, he offered to open the pool when the temperature hits 85 degrees, but he has now dropped it to 80 degrees. “That’s still hot,” he said. “We’ll see how it goes.”
The pool will be open on suitable swimming days from Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through the end of August. People arriving must show IDs and kids must be accompanied by an adult. Capacity is 30 people, which Kaye said he hadn’t yet reached by mid-week.
He said although he was thinking about the kids when he opened it to the public, the pool is for all ages, and the adults who accompany the kids love it, too. He also has a small mini-golf putting area and corn hole for people to play during breaks, which Daniel Purshaga was taking advantage of to practice putting. “I think it’s awesome,” he said.
The lifeguard Kaye hired is Jillian Battles, recent Westfield High School graduate and longtime lifeguard for the YMCA. She said she still opens the Y’s pool on Saturdays.
“I think it’s amazing,” Battles said about the opening of the pool. “Having a place to swim outside on a hot day is just perfect. Kids love the water features, too.”
One of three alternatives for pools, fiberglass is catching up to vinyl and gunite — concrete — in popularity, are now reaching one-third of the marketplace and the trajectory is up, Kaye said.
All inground, fiberglass pools are extremely durable, offer very fast installation and a lifetime warranty. “All the engineering work has been done in a factory in Tennessee,” he said.
Pools like the one he has opened to the public range in price from $60,000 to $120,000. Features built into the pool include a waterfall — which Jillian said the kids really like, an “ultimate hot tub,” and a tanning ledge in the shallow end for chairs.
One thing Kaye did not anticipate was the amount of attention he is getting from the media. By the afternoon of July 16, he was on his third interview of the day, including Channel 7 News out of Boston. He said they were talking about him on Rock 102 that morning, also.
“In today’s world, there is too much bad news. Let there be some good news sprinkled in,” he said. Pioneer Valley Fiberglass Pools and Spas is located at 1090 Southampton Rd. in Westfield. They can be contacted at 413-221-8358.
