By Sunayana Prabhu
MIDDLETOWN – A proposed plan could splash some life into the former Port Monmouth Elementary School. The school, shuttered in 2020, is being evaluated by the Monmouth County Park System (MCPS) as a potential public aquatic center.
It is the strategic location of the dormant school that sits at the intersection of Route 36 and Main Street in Middletown Township’s northeast section of Port Monmouth “which would allow us to serve many of the communities in the region from Keyport to Middletown to Highlands,” explained MCPS director Andrew Spears. The Route 36 corridor “is one of the more densely populated portions of the county and we believe that there are a lot of families that would really benefit from aquatic programming,” Spears said.
Right now, MCPS officials are still gathering data on the market and the feasibility of an aquatic center, primarily looking to get cost estimates for construction and operations. Once they arrive at the cost estimate, funding options will be explored.
The Monmouth County Park System has contracted with Counsilman-Hunsaker, an aquatic planning and design firm, to provide a feasibility study. To aid this study, the MCPS has been running an online public survey through its Facebook page looking for feedback on the need for a facility for fitness, recreation, competition, or other aquatic programs in the community.
Counsilman-Hunsaker has expertise in the aquatics industry. According to their website, the company was founded in 1970 by swimming pioneers and company namesakes James “Doc” Counsilman and Joe Hunsaker. The company portfolio boasts several aquatic design projects throughout the country and internationally for universities, municipalities, school districts, hotels, condos, wellness centers, and military bases.
Township and county officials have been looking to revive the 94-year-old Port Monmouth Elementary building since a Middletown Township Board of Education vote shuttered the school in March 2020 because of declining enrollment and inadequate state aid to sustain its operations. The building’s maintenance alone was expected to cost over $3.7 million.
The Middletown Township Committee and the school district’s board of education have previously made attempts to repurpose the school’s two-story, nearly 25,750-square-foot building with a partial basement. In 2022, the township and board of education contracted with Louisville, Kentucky, firm Pinnacle Indoor Sports to conduct a feasibility study to determine if the property could be used as an indoor sports and recreation center for the community.
More recently the school was used as a film production facility, leased for two months in the summer of 2022 to Rumson resident George Kolber’s Navesink River Productions for his feature film “Miranda’s Victim,” released earlier this year.
The county commissioners “were pleased” with the number of residents responding to the survey, Spears said. The next step in this process is for the county commissioners to decide whether or not to acquire the site which currently is owned by the Middletown Board of Education.
The article originally appeared in the November 23 – November 30, 2023 print edition of The Two River Times.
