Municipal plunge

Glimpsing the Griffith Park Pool while you're trapped between exhaust-spewing vehicles on the 5 is a particularly poignant breed of July-in-LA cruelty. One of the largest public pools in the city is currently empty, save for a shopping cart lobbed into the deep end. This oasis along the freeway has been closed to swimmers since the pandemic began in 2020 — during some of the hottest summers in LA history.

During this latest heatwave I missed the Griffith Park Pool a lot. My oldest learned to swim there exactly five years ago, the last summer it was open. The pool is the ultimate kid-friendly facility — unlike many city pools, one end is shallow enough for a four-year-old to stand with the sweaty adult of their choice, making it an ideal spot to take lessons. But I also loved going there for a visceral reminder that LA can, in fact, make these grand architectural gestures that truly serve the public. The sheer scale is astonishing once you're in the water: in every direction, happy bodies bobbing in the electric blue.

So when I saw a flyer calling on elected officials to fix the pool, right after our city council voted to allocate $54.4 million to a convention center renovation, I got both hot and bothered.

"How can our city spend public funds on preparing for the future Olympic games when one of our finest public spaces of recreation and athletics sits vacant and in disrepair?" asks the Repair & Reopen the Griffith Park Public Pool petition.

After two summers of pandemic-related closures — only about half of the city's pools opened for the 2021 season — the Griffith Park Pool was scheduled to reopen on June 12, 2022. The Los Feliz Neighborhood Council had purchased new umbrellas for the deck. But when the pool was filled, cracks in the foundation sent the water seeping right out. This was not a surprise to anyone who had been to the pool; the arched arcades of the 1927 Spanish Colonial bathhouse were practically dissolving into the dressing rooms. But all of this was particularly infuriating when the public-health mandates of the pandemic would have presented the perfect opportunity to make the fixes. As the petition points out, the loss of this one huge pool reverberates into the surrounding community, where families have few options to cool off during LA's increasingly broiling summers.

Of the 56 pools listed on the city of LA's roster, nine are currently closed. When your local pool is unavailable for whatever reason, LA doesn't make it easy to suss out your options. Every heatwave, LA city leaders hit the airwaves to talk up their Cool Spots LA map, but the map doesn't currently show pools, and the main heat relief page for the city doesn't have a link to information about pools either. I clicked over to the city's SwimLA site, which is good for triangulating a nearby pool based on your location, but the SwimLA pool map with details seems to be down (which might explain the lack of data on the Cool Spots map). Update 7/13: Pool data is back but still don't see pools or splash pads on the Cool Spots LA map. And why isn't the splash pad data updated? Surely they can't all be closed.

Luckily — and here's my #1 LA public pool pro tip — I have bookmarked the city's internal pool report spreadsheet. Instead of clicking through to each pool site one at a time and downloading PDFs — yes, PDFs — to see current opening hours, all the information is listed and updated here in one place.

But if you want to take advantage of LA's city pools, do it fast. About half of LA's pools are seasonal, meaning they'll close in September, during what can be the hottest time of the year. In some years, LA's councilmembers have wrangled the money to extend the season for a few more weeks or on a pool-by-pool basis; the Hollywood Pool was seasonal and is now open year-round. In comparison, LA County, which has opened all its 41 pools for the first time in five years, has extended all its seasonal pool closures to October 31. The county also raised the pay rate for lifeguards and expanded hours. Some county pools are even staying open as late at 10 p.m. — extremely important for those LA nights when you're laying on the floor of your apartment with a bag of frozen peas on your forehead trying to cool down.

I didn't know it at the time, but those lessons my four-year-old took at the Griffith Park Pool were paid for by LA28, in the very earliest stages of its $160 million, 10-year commitment to invest in LA youth sports ahead of the games. Since 2018, through the city's SwimLA program, any child in LA between the ages of 4 and 17 can enroll in swim lessons at city pools that are deeply discounted or free. From 2018 to 2019, after funding from LA28, LA's parks department reported that it doubled swim class enrollment from 18,193 to 36,073. That's a huge deal — especially when you consider that one of the leading causes of death for kids is drowning, and the rate of those deaths has increased in recent years, partially due to pools being closed.

This is a notable commitment. As part of hosting the Olympics, the organizing committee pays to teach LA's kids how to swim. It's in the paperwork signed by the city. But there's also a huge disconnect between this goal and the reality on the ground. How can you pay for lessons when the pools literally can't hold water? Even more kids could learn to swim if LA28 could siphon some of that money towards capital improvements at LA's pools and open them year-round.

As I thought about what that might look like, I reached out to Council District 4 and the city's parks department to check the status of the Griffith Park Pool.

First, the good news:

Council District 4, Recreation and Parks (RAP), and the Bureau of Engineering (BOE) have all been working together with urgency to repair the Griffith Park Plunge Pool and restore the building since it was discovered that the pool could no longer hold water. We immediately identified $2M in Quimby funds to use on initiating the needed design work, and BOE worked with RAP and our office to develop a Task Order Solicitation (TOS) to solicit a design team from our Pre-qualified List of Architects. Negotiations have concluded, and a Notice to Proceed will be issued next week to allow the contractor to begin work on tasks that amount to under $150K. Concurrently, the BOE will process the Board Report to approve the entire Design task. We are able to fully fund the pre-design and design work thanks to additional funds allocated in a Federal Earmark that CD4 pitched to Congressman Adam Schiff, and which he got partially funded through the Federal FY24 Budget process. We also received $5,351,998 in the FY24-25 City Budget for the project, in the first year of a multiyear CTIEP – Municipal Facilities allocation to help begin funding construction.

And now, the still-good, but less-good news:

We anticipate that the design work will take 14 months, the bid solicitation phase will take 6 months, and construction will commence and is expected to take 24 months.

If the entire process begins as it's supposed to next week, we should have our pool back in four years. Four very hot years.

This timeline is interesting after a shuffle of the swim venues was recently announced for 2028: swimming events will be held in a temporary pool built in SoFi Stadium and diving events will be held in an LA public pool built for the 1932 games. The LA84 Foundation/John C. Argue Swim Stadium in Exposition Park is only a few years younger than the Griffith Park Pool. But there will be no surprise cracks. The swim stadium was completely rebuilt in 2004 thanks to a renovation funded by a public-private partnership. Which could also be one way to speed up renovations at other city pools.

Either way, I know the only aquatic competition I'll be watching. Will the Griffith Park Pool be open by the time the Olympics begin? Or will an entire Olympic-sized pool be built in SoFi Stadium and torn down after a week, while the kids in this neighborhood are left sweating through yet another summer? 🔥