UF Spending $300K on Swimming Pool for Incoming President Ben Sasse | 10 Tampa Bay

The University of Florida is making sure its newly hired president, former Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska can dive into the job: It is spending $300,000 to build a new swimming pool behind the stately mansion where Sasse will live with his family, the school confirmed.

Construction on the expensive addition to the 7,400-square-foot, four-bedroom mansion – provided to Sasse at no cost – started in November and is nearly complete, ahead of his first day as UF’s new president on campus next month. Beyond a perimeter fence, mounds of dirt and pallets of pavers were set to the left of the house, promising a finished pool in the coming weeks.

A university spokesman, Steve Orlando, said Sasse did not ask for the pool to be built and provided no input over its design. Sasse had no pool at his family’s home in Fremont, Nebraska. Orlando said the estimated $300,000 to cover its cost came from the mansion’s donors, John and Mary Lou Dasburg of Key Biscayne, and other private sources he did not identify.

The university decided last year, shortly after Kent Fuchs announced he was retiring as UF’s president and before Sasse emerged as the finalist to succeed him, to add the pool to the residence, Orlando said. The university’s original, smaller president’s house also had a pool.

It wasn’t immediately clear why the new pool for Sasse was so expensive, or how much it will cost the university to maintain. The average cost for an in-ground residential pool in Florida is just under $60,000, although features such as tanning ledges, beach entries, hot tubs, lighting, gas-fired heating systems, and more can increase design and installation costs.

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