By Marcelle Dibrell
Plus-Pool (+Pool), a floating, plusshaped swimming pool designed to filter one of New York City’s notoriously polluted rivers, will finally become a reality this summer after a huge surge of funding was granted.
On January 5, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul and city Mayor Eric Adams announced that the state will contribute $12 million and the city will contribute $4 million to pilot and scale + POOL with the goal to create the first urban riversourced swim facility in the United States.
The pool will be open for testing throughout the summer of 2024 and is slated to open for swimming by the summer of 2025. It will accommodate up to 300 swimmers at a time and 1,800 swimmers per day.
The pool will be the first accessible, safe river space in New York City since 1938.
It has taken 13 years to get to this point.
The idea for + Pool was conceived in 2010, when four young designers — Archie Lee Coates IV, Dong-Ping Wong, Jeffrey Franklin, and Oana Stanescu — had a simple idea to build
The wait is over! After 13 years in development, +Pools in New York City’s East River will open for testing this Summer and will open for swimming in the Summer of 2025. The pool will accomodate 1,800 swimmers per day. Photo credit: Plus Pools. a floating swimming pool in New York City’s East River that filters river water through the pool walls to designate a safe area for swimming. The concept inched closer to reality in 2015 when a small collective of creative thinkers and deal makers joined the four designers to create a nonprofit group to realize its vision of free and safe access to the rivers around the city for swimming.
Scientists and engineers joined the team to study the structural integrity of a floating pool that filters water. They began testing water quality to inform the design and development of safe process controls and monitoring systems to ensure safe public access.
In 2017, the organizat ion successfully led a ‘Swim in the River’ campaign that collected more than 10 thousand signatures through an online petition, alongside a public relations and letter writing campaign. The petition was sent to then Mayor Bill de Blasio expressing a desire for safe access to the river.
In 2019, following this grassroots, community-driven effort to seek river access from the city, the NYC Economic Development Corporation released a Request for Expressions of Interest for the development of a selffiltering, floating swimming pool, and + POOL responded to the call. This historic advance created a pathway for a public/private partnership to open up an area of the river for swimming.
In May 2021, Friends of + POOL received a notice to proceed with the project.
Now, with a healthy infusion of cash, it’s go time.
“Do you know how long we fought for this?” said Mayor Adams. “This was an invention that was possible, to be able to use our own waterways to have pools in communities that have historically been ignored.”
While floating pools already exist all around the world, there are none that float in natural bodies of water that also filter the water that enters them.
+ Pool will work like a giant strainer dropped into the river, filtering bacteria and contaminants through the concentric layers of filtration materials that make up the walls of the pool itself — leaving only clean, safe, and swimmable river water that meets local and state standards. In its final form, the Olympic-size pool will filter more than 1 million gallons of river water daily without chemicals or additives, making a measurable contribution toward cleaning the city’s waterways.
Ultimately, the project is to be designed as four pools in one in the shape of a plus sign in which each quadrant will be dedicated to a different purpose: a children’s pool, a sports pool, lap pool, and lounge pool. Taking two quadrants together, it can serve as an Olympic-size pool, and opened up completely, it will have 9,000 square feet of swimming area in total.
The pool will be tethered to the riverbed, which will allow it to rise and lower with the tides and waves.
It will also make it easier to move around if needed. Because the pool will be floating and tethered to the riverbed, it can be designed to ride the waves and surges of a storm, similar to a boat.
A main challenge is to prevent other debris from washing into and colliding with the pool during a massive storm.
This, and other challenges, will be tested this summer, and many are thrilled at the possibility of enjoying the city’s waterways for swimming.
“New York’s waterways are currently out of bounds from those who could benefit most from them,” said Kara Meyer, Friends of + POOL Managing Director. “+ POOL reclaims New York’s natural resources by opening our waters. It restores the utility of our waterways. It gives everyone the ability to enjoy the water. It enables people to care for and coexist with nature.”
Many others are not convinced, however, and they took to social media to share their concerns.
For some, it is an issue of priorities, and they wonder if this is the best way to spend government money.
“Fight homelessness? Affordable housing? Mental health? No — let’s build an expensive pool in the dirty river and make tax payers pay for it,” one person posted on Facebook.
Others pointed to fact that New York’s waterways are notorious dumping grounds for dead bodies, and they are squeamish about swimming in the river, even if the water is filtered.
“According to the mafia, there’s already a lot of New Yorkers already ‘swimming’ in the East River,” one person posted.
It’s a fact that in any given year, more than two dozen bodies are recovered from New York rivers. Referred to as the “spring harvest,” police find most of the bloated bodies (floaters), dumped over the winter months, near the Bay Bridge and South Street Seaport, right around April.
Many others, however, are not persuaded that the pool can be made sanitary, given the plan to use no chemicals or additives: “Gonna be nothing but a huge petri dish.”
“It’s in the shape of a cross because anyone who swims in it will need the healing power of Christ after.”
“Homeless people have a place to bathe.”
“Sounds like one big cesspool in my opinion.”
“This is going to be a human soup bowl.”
“1,800 people peeing and bathing a day but it cleans the river lol.”
By the end of the extensive testing planned for the summer of 2024, these and other concerns should have been addressed.
Visit https://pluspool.org/ to learn more.
