Local swim teams are freestyling elsewhere these days.

With the Ruiz-Costie/Northshore Pool closed, Northshore School District Public Information Officer Leanna Albrecht said the district was forced to find alternative spots for the Bothell, Woodinville and Inglemoor high-school swim teams to practice and hold meets.

Albrecht said, for the most part, practices for any teams displaced by the closure of the Northshore Pool will move to either the Juanita High Pool or the Carole Ann Wald Memorial Pool at St. Edward State Park.

For the majority of scheduled meets, Juanita will be the home pool, so to speak, for any Northshore district teams that had been using the Bothell pool.

A blown boiler led to the pool’s closure Aug. 22.

According to both city and Northshore School District officials, the pool is likely to stay shuttered for at least the immediate future.

Former operator Northwest Centers already had announced it was losing money on pool operations and was opting out of its contract to run the facility when the pool boiler stopped working Aug. 18. Northwest’s Chris Sumi said his organization kept the pool operating for a few days, but when the water temperature dropped below 80 degrees, they closed the facility doors.

“Northwest Centers is in the process of decommissioning the building and mothballing the pool,” said Albrecht.

Albrecht said Northwest’s actions are in keeping with the contract it had in relation to the pool.

The Northshore Pool is jointly owned by the cities of Bothell and Woodinville, along with the school district. According to Albrecht and others, Bothell City Hall has been taking the lead in trying to find a new operator for the pool. But Bothell Public Information Officer Joyce Goedeke said, as of Sept. 4, no new potential operator had been identified.

According to Goedeke, as previously announced, three organizations had expressed at least some willingness to take over the pool when Northwest announced it was pulling out. Of those three potential new operators, at least one, Mill Creek’s West Coast Aquatics, is no longer in the running.

West Coast’s Katherine Gundlach told the Reporter her organization simply does not have the financial means to take over the Northshore Pool. The nonprofit only recently came to the rescue of the Wald Pool and Gymnasium after Northwest pulled out of its operating contract there.

In the case of the Wald Pool, Northwest also cited financial reasons as its motive for cutting its ties to the Kenmore facility.

According to the school district, Northwest stated it was losing about $50,000 a year running the Northshore Pool. A Northwest official previously had said the Wald Pool was costing the organization about $55,000 annually.

Based in Seattle, Northwest is a nonprofit that works with physically challenged individuals. It had used the pools as therapy and exercise centers for its clients.

According to Goedeke, the other two potential operators for the Northshore Pool are, at this point, the Northshore YMCA and WAVE Aquatics, the latter primarily being a large Puget Sound-area swim team. Both groups sent officials to tour the Bothell pool last month.

WAVE officials have never responded to Reporter requests for comments regarding the Northshore Pool. At the Bothell YMCA, Executive Director Luann Jackman said in late August that her organization “was just wrapping up its due diligence” in regard to pool operations. Jackman made her comments before news of the pool’s broken boiler was made public. She had stated YMCA officials hoped to get some answer to the city by the end of August, but that apparently did not take place.

Jackman did not return a phone call for this story.