10/09/2026
Romney Pool Project: Thanking The People Who Got Us Here
It's official: the Town of Romney has been awarded $975,000 from the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which doubles the community's own $975,000 and makes a $1.95 million pool and park possible.
This story starts with people from our little community, but includes people who rarely, if ever, visit. It could have ended more than once: when the pool closed with no money to replace it, and again when a federal rule nearly disqualified the property. The people behind this story are why there is a pool to build.
Starting at home: Before there was a federal match, before the project approached $2 million, this community had raised more than $80,000 toward building a pool for our kids.
The old pool served local families for more than half a century. By 2023, age, repairs, and debt service on the pool house had made it hard to keep open, and a major leak finally closed it. No municipal capital account was waiting to replace it.
So people went to work. The early fundraising efforts reached over $110,000, including $30,000 from the Hampshire County Commission. The rest, more than $80,000, came from home: the Romney Community Pool Project Volunteers; Hampshire County Helping Hands; KoolWink Motel; the Moose Lodge; Mountaineer Mental Health; Honeybee Music; Eastern Building; the Romney Housing Authority; Shaffer's Trunk or Treat; a bake sale; and many individual residents. Some gave thousands of dollars. Some gave twenty-five. All of it counted.
For a community Romney's size, that was a meaningful accomplishment on its own. But those first dollars were worth more than their total: they proved local people were already invested before the Town asked any larger institution to believe in the project.
Behind the checks were the volunteers who organized the events, recruited donors, and kept the pool in front of people for three years when progress was hard to see. The Romney Parks and Recreation board and Town Council were there the whole way, meeting after meeting and vote after vote, with Town officials and staff carrying the work in the background. None of it happened out of sight. Since the effort began in 2023, the pool has been taken up in more than 20 documented public meetings: its funding, its location, the sale of the old property, the grant strategy. Every one was publicly noticed and open to anyone who wanted to attend.
The project also had to move, and that decision deserves explaining. The old site was tight. Replacing the pool in place would have meant demolishing it and rebuilding inside a condensed footprint with very limited parking. Moving to the Barn property meant starting on a clear lot: room to expand, room for an upgraded pool house, and, as it turned out, a cheaper build than working around what was already there. The old pool site was sold for a little more than the existing debt, and the proceeds paid off its debt, which allowed the project to move forward under fewer fiscal constraints. The few thousand that was left over after the debt was paid went immediately back into the project.
Then the circle widened. Anonymous donors (husband and wife) donated an extraordinary $250,000; this beautiful act gave the effort real momentum. The West Virginia First Foundation awarded $120,000. The Foundation holds West Virginia’s share of the opioid settlement funds, dedicated to prevention and treatment, and the Town’s application made the case that a public pool is prevention: supervised recreation, water safety, exercise, and somewhere for young people to be. It was the first award of its kind in the State. The County Commission pledged another $30,000. The Town directed its own opioid funds and other resources to the pool. By late 2025, roughly $775,000 had been raised or committed.
Although that was substantial, the plan was a roughly $1.1 million pool and pool house, and closing the last financing gap meant borrowing: years of debt for a small town, and the essential version of the project at the end of it.
Then the Land and Water Conservation Fund offered a fifty-percent federal match, meaning the same local dollars could double. This would not only eliminate the need for a loan but allow the pool and park to be developed more fully. Waiting meant delay and no guarantee, but the Town decided this community's money deserved the chance to do twice the work.
The Bank of Romney stepped up in a really big way and pledged $200,000 so that the project could effectively grow by $400,000 if the grant were awarded. This allowed the project scope to develop more fully into a park that could host more community uses for more of the year. The Bank of Romney also provided the financial backing to allow the Town to carry the project.
Eric Sherrard and Chase Higginbotham of The Thrasher Group turned years of hope and community feedback into a grant-ready application on a very short deadline.
Then the circle widened again, and not by choice. A state review against the federal requirements turned up a federal grant restriction that would have limited eligibility without further work on the Barn property title, a technicality with the power to end everything. Phillip Avis at the Department of Economic Development helped the Town team navigate the cure, but the timeline was incredibly tight.
Superintendent Clayton Burch of the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf and the Blind made the introductions that started the process. The Thrasher team went above and beyond again, fast-tracking the survey and property description work the final deed would require. Kelli Talbott and Curtis Green at the State Department of Education legal office helped get that deed work done and into the right hands. The State Board of Education acted, and State Treasurer Larry Pack and his staff helped move it through the Board of Public Works. Within a few weeks, the critical documents were created, vetted, and approved by two State bodies. The folks who made this part happen didn’t own this project, but they treated it like it was theirs, and they found a way through.
Most of what followed happened in drawings, deeds, and agency correspondence rather than anywhere you could see from the street. The Hampshire Review stayed with it anyway, covering the project in five news articles and one opinion column since the project started. After the Board of Public Works cleared the title, the story was picked up statewide. A project like this is hard to explain when there is nothing to photograph, and the Review kept asking.
Today, that first $80,000 from home is part of the foundation for a $1.95 million, more fully developed pool and park project: $975,000 local, $975,000 federal. The plan now includes parking, fencing, a pavilion and picnic area, a basketball court, a playground, trail and landscaping work, and piping that would make a splash pad easier to add later. That scope is still tentative: final design, competitive bidding, and the budget will decide what gets built in this phase. But we are confident the core, the pool and the pool house, will be there.
Before the next phase begins, the Town wants to say thank you. To the Romney Community Pool Project Volunteers, who organized, fundraised, and refused to let this go. To every resident, business, nonprofit, and organization that gave. To the anonymous donors. To the Romney Parks and Recreation board, the Town officials, and the staff who kept carrying the work forward. And to everyone named above, each of whom did more than the job required.
No list holds everyone. If you donated, volunteered, organized, encouraged, advocated, attended a meeting, answered a call, or just kept asking about the pool, thank you. This milestone is yours as much as anyone's.
There is more ahead: contracting, construction, opening, and then caring for it. But every time this project ran into a hurdle that seemed too much, somebody stepped forward to help, and we trust that same widening circle is up to the task ahead.
Onward and upward.
