The Northeast Spa & Pool Association (NESPA) plans to move into its new headquarters and training center on April 30, 2008, according to Lawrence Caniglia, Executive Director of NESPA.
“We closed on the building in May 2007 and have been working with architects and our builder over the past year to get the space designed and built out,” he said. The building is in a centrally located area of New Jersey, located right off Rt. 130 near Exit 7A on The New Jersey Turnpike in Hamilton, New Jersey. This is a convenient location for NESPA’s far-flung region made up of chapters in Connecticut, New York, New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania.

“The building itself is 13,800 square feet,” noted Caniglia. “We are taking 10,000 square feet of it for NESPA right now. We have an existing tenant who will use 3,800 square feet over the term of their lease, which runs for the next few years under the existing terms. Within the 10,000 square feet we are using, we are creating 6,000 square feet of classroom and hands-on training. The hands-on training areas are about 4,000 square feet and the classroom space is about 2,000 square feet.” Remaining space will be built out as office space for NESPA staff.           

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Drainage for two of the three training rooms

The educational part of the facility is composed of two big classrooms and three large training rooms. The largest classroom will be dedicated to classroom training with state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment—everything that is needed for modern training. The second classroom will be used as a meeting room, boardroom and additional training room as needed. The boardroom/classroom will contain a library, which will hold all of our codes and standards resources. The second classroom can also be quickly converted into a dining facility for students, and there will be a small kitchen, vending machines and restrooms there.

As mentioned above, there is also three large training rooms. “One is what we call a ‘workbench’ area,” explained Caniglia. “There will be rolling workbenches where each student will sit at his or her own workbench. If they are working on motors, they will each have their own motor to work on. If they are working on heaters, they will have their own heater. Each area has its own electricity and cabinets. Each area is set up for individual students to focus on their own project.”

The second Hands-on training area, according to Caniglia, will hold a gunite pool and spa combination, which will have every possible feature that one can think of including automatic cover, water feature, different types of drainage systems, different types of skimmers, and suction-vacuum release systems. A lot of it will be “plug and play,” where all of the plumbing will be there and of course the pool will be structured and built, but it will be able to take different types of pumps and filters and heaters and other components that can be plugged into the pool.

“The third area, which is the smallest of the three, but still plenty large enough will be the vinyl liner

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Staff offices down the curved hallway

and hot tub room,” he said. “A hot tub will be set up and there will be space to do a vinyl liner

installation, which we can set up and take down as needed.”

The training/meeting area will be separate from the administrative facilities of NESPA where staff will be working. There will be a common entry door to the building, but the hallway then splits off with education going to the right, and administration located to the left.