Backyard Pools Are Making a Comeback, Freestyle
If ever there was a business that could lay claim to being a quintessentially San Fernando Valley industry, it’s swimming pool construction. Thousands upon thousands of homeowners had swimming pools built in their backyards during the 1950s and 1960s, when the industry fairly roared along. Building spurts of the 1970s and 1980s added thousands more.
Precise figures are hard to come by, but Doug Latta, former president of the Swimming Pool Trades & Contractors Assn., said there are an estimated 250,000 pools in greater Los Angeles, including perhaps 150,000 in the Valley.
Whatever the number, there is no question there is a mini-boom underway. In the city of Los Angeles, 1,083 permits for pools and spas were taken out in the 12 months ended in February, compared with 619 permits for the previous 12-month period.
Within the last year, the total value of pool construction in the city has grown by more than 78%, to more than $18.6 million.
“Right now, pool construction is going extremely well to say the least. Most pool builders definitely have their hands full,” said Latta, president of Chatsworth-based Aqua Clear Pools. There’s also no question that the Valley dominates pool construction in the city--874 of the 1,083 construction permits for the most recent year were in the Valley.
The Valley accounted for more than 75% of the pool and spa permits and approximately 80% of the dollar value of construction in the city during the last two years, according to spokesman Dave Keim of the city Building and Safety Department.
Along with the revival in construction, Latta said contractors are installing ever more elaborate--and more expensive--pools, lagoons, water features and spas for owners of existing pools as well as new home buyers and current homeowners who somehow hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
Most buy moderately priced pools costing $25,000 to $40,000, but it’s not uncommon for owners of luxury homes to sink several hundred thousand dollars into an elaborate pool and spa combination.
The Valley, however, is known in an industry where even modest homes in poorer neighborhoods have pools. According to Latta, the San Fernando Valley was one of the first places in the country, if not first, where pools became a ubiquitous backyard feature.
“Up through the 1920s and ‘30s and into the 1940s, the backyard pool was something that only the rich could afford,” Latta said. “But after World War II, new construction techniques came out that pretty much revolutionized the industry.”
The budding pool industry in the early years also got a boost from an already established Valley business, the movie industry, and champion-swimmer-turned-movie-star Esther Williams, whose films glamorized pools and the poolsidelife.
Builders and industry officials attribute today’s surge of construction to the stable economy, both locally and nationally.
The number of new pools built nationwide grew to 173,000 in 1998, leaping by more than 14% from the previous year, according to Jack Cergol, spokesman for the National Spa & Pool Institute in Alexandria, Va. The number was up 41% from the 1994 total of 122,500 new pools and spas.
“The No. 1 reason for the increase is that the economy improved and people have more discretionary income,” Cergol said. He said the national figures also reflect home-building booms in sunny locales like Las Vegas and Phoenix.
When the real estate market crashed, so did the pool business.
Bernard Zimring, a partner at Mission Hills-based Aquatic Pools Inc. and a former president of the Southern California Chapter of the National Spa & Pool Institute, said 1990-1994 was one of the toughest periods in memory, with many pool companies going out of business and profits shrinking at the surviving firms. The ’94 Northridge earthquake boosted business temporarily because it damaged so many pools, but that was mainly restoration work. Today’s boom includes more new construction.
Today’s pools also are more likely to be pool and spa combinations, with myriad possible combinations of features and add-ons.
Waterfalls, decks, grottoes, swim-up bars and even sand-covered ersatz beaches are just some of the features popular today, said Steve Erenberg, president of Newhall-based SCV Pools, which bills itself as L.A.’s largest custom pool builder.
Erenberg pointed out that despite the increased demand, companies are limited in how fast they can grow because the supply of skilled pool construction workers is limited.
“The biggest constraint is the labor supply,” said David Sykes, a pool and spa industry consultant with the Remington Group in Cambridge, Mass.
Sykes said precise figures on the industry are hard to come by because it is made up mainly of mom-and-pop companies that often don’t want to reveal sales figures.
Sykes, who has researched the U.S. pool and spa industry for a number of years, estimates it generates $10 billion a year in design and construction revenue, about $9 billion in maintenance and repair, and $2.6 billion in chemicals, filters and related supplies. Other segments of the industry, including furniture, accessories, financing and landscaping, push the total to more than $30 billion.
“The industry is under heavy pressure to consolidate, and the capital markets are looking at it as an attractive target for possible roll-ups,” Sykes said. (A roll-up is a popular type of Wall Street deal in which financiers buy a group of small companies in a fragmented industry and roll them up into one large entity, often with a public stock offering at the same time.)
With or without roll-ups, the pool business is expected to keep rolling along. “The industry has had some very good years and appears headed for another one,” said Jules Field, publisher of Los Angeles-based Pool & Spa News.
