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The repairs at Simpson Park Pool are complete and a polar plunge was held Saturday, Feb. 8 to inaugurate the new liner.
But the pool will now remain closed until Memorial Day weekend because it is too cold to swim in it — and some city leaders say that’s not right.
“Simpson Park Pool needs to be heated,” said Lorenzo Robinson, president of the Paul A. Diggs Neighborhood Association in Northwest Lakeland. “Let’s spread the money out evenly.”
Bob Donahay, director of the city’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Arts Department, told city commissioners at their Monday meeting that it would cost between $600,000 and $800,000 to install a heater and pay for year-round life guards and staff for the complex.
”About half of that is initial and the other half is reoccurring,” Donahay said.
Why it matters: The Simpson Park Pool is the only public swimming pool serving north Lakeland. It’s used for swimming lessons, summer camps and senior groups. For many children in the predominantly Black neighborhoods near the pool, it’s their biggest form of summer recreation.
Historic perspective: NAACP Lakeland Branch President Terry Coney said Simpson Park Pool has existed in some form since the 1950s, when Black residents could not swim in the whites-only Adair Park Pool, which has since been demolished.
In the 1980s, Kelly Recreational Complex and its Gandy Pool were built and Simpson Park Community Center and Pool were rebuilt. While a heater was installed in Gandy Pool, Simpson Park Pool was left in the cold.
Reminiscent of segregation: Terry Coney, who is 73, grew up in Lakeland and learned how to swim in the old Simpson Park Pool. He said both Simpson and Gandy should’ve gotten equal amenities when they were built and added that the disparity is reminiscent of the segregation era, when whites-only schools, park, and community centers were state-of-the-art while similar facilities on the Black side of town received hand-me-downs or were inferior.
“Your budget-time next year, that pool needs to be up to the same standards as the pool on the south side of town,” Coney told city commissioners on Monday.
“A citizen living in north Lakeland that wants to take advantage of the pool shouldn’t have to drive past Simpson Park and go all the way to Kelly Rec for that pool.”
Coney said his parents made sure that he and his siblings received swimming lessons in Simpson Park Pool because they both had friends who had drowned in area lakes such as Beulah and Hunter — the only places for Black children to swim until Simpson Park Pool was built.
“Simpson Park always has had the stigma as the Black swimming pool, rather than the north Lakeland, city of Lakeland, north-side swimming pool,” Coney added.
Recent closure: Simpson Park Pool was shut down in June after the PVC liner separated from the pool wall, which created a bubble that floated to the surface — a drowning hazard.
In August, city officials announced the work would cost $408,435 and the pool would reopen in October.
In October, the city announced that additional damage had been found when the liner was pulled off, including a felt barrier that was heavily infested with algae. They said it would take an additional $89,200 and another month to fix.
A bullet: In December, Donahay told city commissioners that the Simpson Park Pool would reopen before scheduled repairs started on Kelly Rec’s Gandy Pool. Those repairs started Jan. 2.
But Donahay said this week that when workers arrived to fill the pool in early January, they found a bullet slug in the bottom of the pool and a hole in the PVC lining.
“I don’t think they were shooting into the pool,” he said, explaining that it probably happened New Year’s Eve, when people shoot guns into the air not realizing that the bullet has to come down somewhere.
“Normally if that were to happen, we would have water in the pool and it wouldn’t do anything. But it caused a problem — that was a $21,000 error.”
At Kelly Rec, repairs on the Gandy Pool are taking less time than they originally thought and it should reopen March 2 or 3, Donahay said.
Simpson Park Pool is scheduled to reopen Memorial Day weekend.
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