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The Villages
Sunday, May 12, 2024

Three-way land swap provides bigger footprint for proposed Leesburg aquatic center

Leesburg commissioners approved a land-swap plan on Monday night that will prove beneficial to the building of the city’s proposed $2.68 million aquatic center.

The site of the proposed Leesburg aquatic complex on Pine Street, between Canal Street and S Childs Street.

The facility is slated to be placed on a parcel of land off Pine Street near Leesburg Fire Station 61. The city was hoping to acquire a piece of land at the northeast corner of Canal and Pine Street to make the aquatic center site bigger.

Thanks to a three-way land-swap deal, that parcel will become part of the aquatic center footprint. The terms of the deal call for the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) to receive an 11,648-square-foot parcel from the Community Development Corporation (CDC). That will give the CAC more property adjacent to its current location and allow for future expansion.

The second part of the deal calls for the CDC to keep a parcel that is part of its original lot and in exchange, the city will partner with the organization on other properties it may acquire or already own for redevelopment.

Finally, the city will receive a parcel from the CAC that will be added onto the land it already had purchased from the CDC for development of the aquatic facility.

The new complex will replace the aging pool at the Dabney Recreation Complex and the already demolished Venetian Gardens facility. It is scheduled to include a 5,800-square-foot outdoor multi-use pool with eight lanes, springboard diving, a shallow-water recreational zone with interactive play features, a 3,500-square-foot bathhouse, a shade structure, hardscape/landscape design, irrigation design, perimeter security fencing and a parking lot.

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