The Wally Pool
The Wally Pool era, in the mid-90’s, only lasted a couple of years, but it had a tremendous impact on the St. John vacation market. They filled a need: installing a pool where it was economically or physically impractical. That has kept a lot of really great, older villas competitive in the rental market. And there’s nothing wrong with these pools. Kids love them, they’re big enough for a floatie or two, and they cool you off after a day at the beach. (Don’t let Website pictures fool you. The big ones are 20 feet long.)
By Wally Leopold’s best guess, there are about 75 fiberglass Wally Pools on St. John. It all started in 1995, when Wally wanted to add a pool to his house called Lizard Hill. But after finding the perfect prefab pool, he found out it would cost more to ship it down than the pool itself cost. So he came up with the idea to stack several of them together…and all of a sudden, he was in the pool business. The first container full was sold before they even got to the island. (Click here to see a picture of St. John’s very first Wally Pool.)
Wally and his wife now live on Lovango Cay, and life must be good, because the only thing my 8 am phone call interrupted was a game of Scrabble. Read our whole interview with Wally Leopold, and find out about The Wally Pool here.
August 21st, 2007 20:01
I loved this.
If you don’t actually live here and you haven’t actually gone through this type of experience, it might seem kind of ho-hum.
If you’ve lived here for a while, everything about this story reminds you of all the things that you did that you didn’t actually plan to do or know how to do in the first place. You just figured it out and made it work and hopefully in the end, you got what you needed.
You learned a lot, maybe you got together in a cooperative spirit with the other people who needed the same thing and in the long run, maybe you broke even. Maybe you made few bucks, maybe not.
In the long run, you have a funny story to tell.
Wally is a legend on St. John.
When renting a house on St. John, if it came down to a Wally Pool or No Pool, I know which one I’d choose.
-Ruth
August 21st, 2007 21:18
Wooden barrel cisterns were also a craz in the mid 80’s and have since gone by the way side.
August 22nd, 2007 10:51
I know Wally well and he and his wife Toni are really good people. Actually, the first villa we ever stayed at on STJ was Lizard Hill - what a location. It’s part of the reason we bought a villa down there ourselves. I didn’t think anything about the pool - I enjoyed it. Good story!
August 24th, 2007 10:58
Good story, I love the background. Thanks.
Cheers, RickG
August 24th, 2007 14:19
The last house we stayed at in Coral Bay had a Wally Pool…I thought it was perfectly refreshing!