The Knoxville Recreation Center will start a month-long pool closure on Friday.

This pool closure is for a complete repainting of the pool that will involve sandblasting all of the old layers of paint and adding a new layer of paint. This will be done by a professional company out of St. Louis. The pool was last painted in 2020, but it has never been completely sandblasted down and repainted professionally as it is normally done in-house. Knoxville Parks and Recreation Director Brandon Nemmers tells KNIA/KRLS that the pool was getting to the point that this needed to be done and it was budgeted out for this current fiscal year budget.

“We’ll get it all drained and it will take us a couple of days here and then we will prepare the deck and some of those areas for a third party to come in and professionally paint the pool. This year we’ve budgeted for this and we have chosen for a professional company to come in. In the past we have painted it in house but it’s to the point where we need to sandblast it down. They’ll come in and build a nice tent around the pool and sandblast and professionally paint.”

The pool is expected to open back up on May 1st. Hear more about the project from Nemmers on Friday’s Let’s Talk Knoxville.