CAMAS — As temperatures crept toward 90 degrees on a recent weekday, swarms of people packed Camas’ top spots to recreate and cool off, with one exception:

The Crown Park pool, a fixture in the city for 64 years, sat empty.

In January, city councilors voted against opening the aging pool this year. Just bringing the pool up to the point where it would meet health and safety codes would cost somewhere in the range of $481,000 to $710,000, according to City Administrator Pete Capell. Estimates for a complete renovation of the pool were in the range of $1.69 million to $2.19 million, almost enough to build an entirely new pool. So rather than fix the county’s only outdoor public pool, councilors are considering its demolition.

Meanwhile the heat is on and the crowds have arrived.

Without the Crown Park pool, where are all these people chilling?

Walking on water

Lacamas Lake and Round Lake are both summer destinations in Camas. Randy Curtis, chairman of the city’s parks and recreation commission, said those spots are popular with kayakers and paddleboarders.

“We’re clearly getting a lot of folks using the lakes, particularly with the nonmotorized kind of boats,” he said. “You can almost walk across the lakes with the amount of paddleboards and kayaks in there.”

Lydia Carroll, co-owner of Sweetwater SUP Rentals, wasn’t sure if larger crowds in the lakes could be attributed to the Crown Park pool closure. The paddleboard and kayak rental company is in its fifth season, and its fourth as the water concessionaire at Lacamas Lake. She said business has picked up a bit this year.