Maybe they should call it Red Hot Hook.
Public pools opened on June 27, but the Parks Department still has not opened the massive Red Hook Pool — and has not offered a single plan for cooling off tens of thousands of sweltering residents in one of the poorest districts in town: No temporary pool, no water-spray trucks, no shuttle buses to the Sunset Park or Douglass and Degraw pools that are not in walking distance.
“We’re all sweltering and there’s no pool,” said Lisa Meyer, a Red Hook resident for more than 35 years. “They got caught with bad planning and threw the community into an untenable situation.”
The pool didn't open on schedule because, according to the Parks Department, a crucial pipe crumbled just before Opening Day, making it impossible for the agency to fill the pool that is a vital public amenity for the 25,000 residents of the pool's catchment area, a low-income region.
Repairs are in progress, the spokesperson said, including the “custom fabrication of replacement parts” to address a “significant rupture” to one of the pool's waterlines.
The agency says the pool won’t open until mid-August, just days before the swimming season ends on Sept. 7 — not a good look for an agency with "recreation" in its official name.
One park advocate blamed City Hall for neglect.
“The pipe burst — we don’t see it as an accident [but] as a reflection of decades of underinvestment," said Kathy Park Price, a spokesperson for New Yorkers for Parks. "It’s also not an accident that it’s in Red Hook — a neighborhood that is constantly overlooked for city resources. Whether that’s our parks, our public transit to protected bike lanes … Red Hook is always getting shafted in terms of the resources available to most New Yorkers."
The closure, she added, is a "symbol of the overarching lack of funding for parks in the budget.”
For now, the Parks Department recommended that Red Hook residents visit the tiny Douglass and Degraw Pool or the larger Sunset Park pool — but both are distant for people without cars and offer no direct transit link, meaning families with floaties and beach towels would need to navigate the city’s bus network for up to 45 minutes each way. Red Hook residents would need to take two buses or, alternatively, an hour-long trek by foot, creating hurdles for those looking to cool off in the summer heat.
Park Price called that suggestion, "out-of-touch with the realities of Red Hook," which is cut off from the rest of Brooklyn by the the Battery Tunnel and the Gowanus Expressway.
"It would have been nice to hear some more creative options,” she said. “Red Hook is often getting the short end of the stick in so many ways."
The Sol Goldman Recreation Center, as it officially known, is also a community hub, functioning all-year as a rec center and gym. (Ironically, it is named for a philanthropist whose multi-million-dollar donation averted massive pool closures during a 1980s budget crisis.)
“It's open year-round, so it sounds like someone dropped the ball,” said Latasha Jordan, a mother in Red Hook who used to take her kids to the neighborhood pool daily during previous summers. “To not find [the broken pipe] is problematic. That’s a slap in the face, and so unfortunate.”
So what the hell?!
Streetsblog has sought a laundry list of answers from the Parks Department on how this colossal summer bummer even happened and why the agency has offered no contingency plans during one of the hottest Julys in recorded history.
We wanted to know:
- Why the fragile pipe was not discovered earlier or during the 43 weeks when the pool is not in use.
- When the pool last was refurbished or repaired.
- Whether the agency had discussed establishing a regular shuttle route from the closed Red Hook pool to its suggested alternatives. (The advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks made such a request through a public petition.)
The agency said only that "mechanical failures" like this were "impossible to anticipate" before filling the pool. The agency did knock down one popular idea: hiring a fleet of water tankers to simply fill the 1.2 million gallons basin, which experts say would take a couple of weeks.
The Parks Department called that option "not feasible" because “the pipe in question is required to circulate and chlorinate the water to make it safe for swimming."
A technician from a Long Island pool company agreed that the Parks Department might have a point there: "It could be a very plausible answer," she said. "That whole pipe has to be dug up. That’s not a cheap repair, to be honest."
We wanted to ask Mayor Adams about his agency's inability to provide a basic amenity for tens of thousands of low-income New Yorkers during the mayor's much-hyped "We Outside Summer," but Hizzoner hasn't had a press availability in more than a month.
The lack of a community pool is particularly devastating in a historically underserved area like Red Hook, where 45 percent of residents live below the city's median household income of $80,000 a year. Adding to that, nearly 30 percent of the residents of the neighborhood are kids and seniors, who especially need to beat summer heat.
Before it was closed, the pool center provided essential, live-saving swim classes to kids and adults alike. Meyer said that her children, like countless others, learned to swim in the cost-free pool that sits next to an expanse of baseball fields and serves as a community gathering spot.
“It’s an anchor in the community and an essential part of Red Hook,” said Meyer, doubting that the pool would open at all this season. “It’s always been a safe space for the community to gather and cool off.”
Looking Ahead
Even after the current roadblock is cleared up, the Red Hook pool won’t be chaos-free for long. The Parks Department has slated a major $122-million construction project for 2028, promising to rebuild the recreation center and “the entire pool basin and its supporting components" that were damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.
But with the pool’s opening date for this summer still up in the air, residents like Meyer wonder if they can trust the city.
“What’s the story for next summer?” she asked. “What is the renovation project? Do they have the funds? And — most important — what’s the timeline?”
