Hi, and welcome to the forum!!

Yes, you can bypass the salt cell--a salt pool IS a chlorine pool--the difference being that with a SWCG, the chlorine is generated from the salt that's in the water, rather than added manually. The salt will stay in the pool, but that's not a problem--in fact, some of our members add salt to their water just because they like the "feel" of the water. Over time it will dilute, but probably won't ever go away completely unless you drain and refill sometime in the future.

You'll have to be consistent about your testing, though, because with a non-SWCG pool you'll need to add chlorine most every day. So make sure you have a good test kit (we like the K-2006 at the Amazon link in my sig).