[title]
It’s been a scorcher of a summer already in New York City, but for Red Hook, one vital cool-down spot remains stubbornly out of commission.
The Red Hook Pool, a beloved Olympic-sized oasis that’s served the Brooklyn waterfront since 1936, never opened for the season. Just days before its planned June 27 debut, a decades-old pipe “completely disintegrated,” according to NYC Parks officials, halting operations before the first splash.
Since then, the timeline has shifted like a pool noodle in the deep end. First slated for a July 19 reopening, that date was quickly scrapped once it became clear the busted 16-inch feeder pipe needed to be custom-fabricated—a process that takes weeks. Now, the earliest projected reopening is mid-August, leaving just a few fleeting weeks before city pools close on September 7.
RECOMMENDED: This NYC pool is one of the largest in the city, and it opened this summer
That news hasn’t gone over well with locals. Alan Mukamal, a longtime resident who recently founded Friends of the Red Hook Pool, said the city’s suggested alternatives aren’t practical for many families. “I had little kids, I know I wasn’t going to get them on a bus to go two miles, transfer, go swimming, get back on the bus with the air conditioner on, they’re all wet,” he told Brooklyn Paper. “It’s not a realistic thing.”
Council Member Alexa Avilés echoed the frustration, noting the city’s failure to provide alternative options or timely communication. “These delays are really frustrating,” she told the paper. “To see [a needed upgrade] drag on forever and then impact pool operations is very frustrating.”
Red Hook has felt the ripple effects of long-neglected infrastructure before. The pool and adjacent recreation center were badly damaged during Hurricane Sandy and are now in line for a $122 million rebuild, slated to begin in 2028. That project will fully replace the pool basin, filtration systems and add resiliency upgrades, but it’s cold comfort to residents sweating it out in 2025.
In the meantime, community members and groups like New Yorkers for Parks are calling for action: faster fixes, shuttle service to other pools and transparency around what's next. “Pools are not a luxury, they are essential to communities, so to have this pool close on the first day the pools were supposed to open—that’s heartbreaking,” said Kathy Park Price, director of advocacy and policy at New Yorkers for Parks, in an interview with The City.
While the Red Hook Pool will technically—just barely—open for the season, this summer of no-swim has left many residents high and dry in a neighborhood where access to green space and public cooling options are already limited.