Residents of Red Hook have been sweltering all summer, but help may be on the way.
The neighborhood's Olympic-sized pool, a critical public resource that has been closed for the entirety of this scorching hot summer, may open as soon as Sunday, according to a Parks Department worker at the recreation center.
A second worker added on Monday that filling the pool, a four-day process, would indeed begin on Wednesday.
If the pool opens on Aug. 17, that would leave only three weeks before the city’s pool season ends on Sept. 7.
Work is underway in the facility’s pump room to replace a pipe that burst when the city tried to fill the pool a few days before the hotly anticipated June 27 opening day. The workers, who declined to be named, said that they expected the replacement pipe, custom ordered from Canada, to arrive later on Thursday.
Once installed, the Parks Department fill open up the taps and fill the pool, a process that takes a few days. It is expected to reach 90 degrees on Sunday.
The discovery of the burst pipe was a “mechanical failure” that city officials said was “impossible to anticipate.” But the Parks Department failed to provide any alternative for Red Hookers beyond directing them to other public pools much further away. But after Comptroller Brad Lander called out the agency, the Parks Department at least opened the facility’s splash pad and sprinklers.
Residents now have a tiny semblance of relief, but the Parks Department has failed to address Lander's larger point, specifically how the agency failed to assess the crumbling pipe before the pool opened.
Lander has been the only politician who has called for an expedited opening of the Red Hook pool. The area's member of Congress, Dan Goldman was silent about the plight of sweltering residents of Red Hook, the poorest part of his sprawling Silk Stocking-like district.
But after Streetsblog reached out to Goldman for comment, the rep slammed the Parks Department, calling the prolonged closure “unacceptable.”
“I’m sympathetic to the unexpected challenges that arise from maintaining dilapidated infrastructure, but this is a clear example of the consequences of years of disinvestment that Red Hook is forced to deal with,” Goldman told Streetsblog in a statement. “This is the latest in a long list of wake-up calls that Red Hook deserves proper attention to proactively address these issues before they become a crisis for the community.”
But that doesn’t quite scratch the surface of what’s to come for the Sol Goldman Recreation Center, which is supposed to undergo a $122-million capital reconstruction to address damage from Hurricane Sandy, which, it's worth noting, was in 2012. The project, helmed by architecture firm 1100, has lagged for years, and while city's project tracker gives a completion date of 2027, a Parks spokesperson said that construction isn't slated to begin until the following year.
But Alan Mukamal, who runs the group Friends of Red Hook Pool, isn't even sure if that's going to happen, given that the Parks Department hasn't even had so much as a single public feedback session.
“Why aren’t they getting public opinion on this?” he asked.
