OGDEN — Contrary to rumors on social media and a petition that continues to gain steam online, Ogden’s Marshall White Center is not closing.

Ogden Mayor Mike Caldwell said the city became aware of hearsay about the community center’s shuttering and an online petition, which is posted at www.change.org, last week. The city posted a note on its Facebook page, clarifying the issue, once officials saw the rumor gaining traction.

“We were alarmed to see that,” Caldwell said. “We put a bunch of info out, including the fact that we spent $421,000 on a brand new roof last year, we just put in a brand new (Utah) Jazz basketball court, a Real Salt Lake soccer court.”

In addition to the courts, the new roof, and other upgrades to the facility that were covered in the $421,000 appropriation from last year, the city has also built a new parking lot at the center, refinished the indoor basketball gym floors, added new scoreboards and bleachers and expanded boxing facilities and purchased new boxing equipment.

“We don’t know why the rumor came out,” Caldwell said. “But we’re absolutely committed to Marshall White. We wouldn’t have made the kinds of investments that we have over the past year if it wasn’t a priority for us.”

Angel Castillo, an Ogden planning commissioner and 2019 candidate for mayor, told the Ogden City Council on Tuesday that she believes the stir is related to the ongoing saga of the Marshall White Center’s pool.

Sometime before March 5, 2018, the pool developed five large cracks in its concrete surface. Shortly after the cracks were discovered, Ogden City crews analyzed the pool and deemed it unsafe for continued use. Engineers determined the pool was at risk of having a “catastrophic opening,” which could present life safety issues if the water wasn’t drained. The pool has been closed since shortly after the cracks were discovered.

After the pool was drained, the city sought repair and replacement bids from contractors, but those bids came back higher than officials expected, with minimum repair estimates exceeding $500,000. But at this point, repairing the pool seems like an improbable proposition.

Based on results from 14 different “core samples” underneath the pool, a consulting company called Water Design, Inc. recommended the city either replace the pool altogether, or repurpose it and use it from something other than swimming. Initial cost estimates to renovate the pool are between $1.9 million and $2.7 million, according to council documents.

“We’ve been talking about this over a year, people wouldn’t be (believing) a rumor if there was a real solution on board,” Castillo said. “I think what the community wants, and what I would like, is a definitive answer.”

Caldwell said the city likely won’t spend what could be near $3 million to fix the decades old pool, but the city is working to schedule a community meeting in next few weeks to get input from citizens.

Julia Aldrich, a one-time water aerobics instructor at the Marshall White Center, told the council she would like to see the pool open again, despite whatever obstacles might be in the way of that.

“I’m here to really push to get … the pool open again to get the Marshall White Center to become the part of the community it once was,” she said. “It’s lost so much of what it did contribute to the community because so much of it is closed.”