Friday, February 14 2025:
And Saturday it is, finally confirmed on the DFRSP website: https://parks.ny.gov/parks/93/details.aspx
I’ll leave this blog live, for any future Riverbank-morning-related news.
Saturday, February 8 2025:
The pool will re-open Saturday, Feb 15 at 6:30AM — unless it doesn’t! This is official. The water is in, temp @82F, lifeguards well along in heavy training, filter plant testing advanced and no problems expected. If the unexpected unexpectedly intrude, some later opening date will then be posted atop the Riverbank website landing page as part of the pale blue banner (URL in previous post, below). Until the pool actually does open, this may continue to refer only to “winter 2025” for the expected opening or it may lack any reference to the pool, or some other thing, they are playing around with it. Be sure to check there.
Expiry dates &c. on admission cards have been paused so there will be no difficulty on that score. New-comers should inquire about how to get their own, about the different kinds and costs of passes and where and when to access the Park cashier. (They do not open until 9:am or later.)
Photo c Jerry Bruck
Soon to resume: free after-swim portraits for the Early Morning Swimmers photo gallery (see that page on this website). Let the Riverbank administration see how many of us there are!
Friday, January 31 2025:
Amidst rising exasperation and a flurry of rumors about one-or-another approaching re-open dates, acting Riverbank Director Jared Leake tells me this morning that the Park is "targeting late February to re-open" the indoor pool. The exact date, when they hit on it, will be posted on a blue banner atop the Park's website:
Before this I ran into a person who allows me to identify him as "a supervisor" for the filter-replacing contractor. He says that all physical work will be completed either this day or this-coming Monday; that testing will begin immediately and should take about two weeks; that there will be no additional delay awaiting NYC Dept of Health inspection and approval because an inspector will be on-site throughout the testing. My sneak peak into the filter room this morning appears below. He went on to tell me a number of other things that proved to be untrue; so much for that.
Riverlapper Jun Maruta, who's been actively trying to find out what's going on, writes this morning:
"A rumor I heard from a fellow swimmer this morning was that the Riverbank pool was to re-open on Feb 18. The basis of this rumor is not clear, however. On the other hand, the lifeguard I wrote about the other day told me this week that he was to report to work on Feb 6--he was given no further detail on what he might be doing then, but apparently they have to have people "work" certain hours before they can open the facility to the public."
This fits with Jared's long-standing desire not to over-promise on a date, thereby disappointing us if Something unanticipated comes up, not to mention enraging somebody -- there's often one of those, who becomes the face of the public when your are on the other side of the line. Jared is a good guy in my experience and I hope no swimmers vent their frustration on him.
The filter room this morning:
Thursday, December 19 2024:
A day or two ago the new bulkheads arrived; old and new sections of the filter system piled up outdoors and the replacements are somewhere now inside. Execs in the know keep to the old line: “unfortunately, we do not have a definitive date to share at this point.” Will the guages, buttons, blinking lights and knobs perform as intended when the water’s put back in? Will they perform at all?
I was unofficially told today that everything with the job has so far gone “according to plan,“ no unanticipated shocking discoveries &c. Any chance of a January re-opening? No. It remains open-ended.
That’s a far as I got. It’s sad I think that they’ve chosen not to bother with keeping us up-to-date — it would be helpful for some swimmers’ planning, it might go at least a little way to preserving a sense of community, some people like that, it might be interesting also to see photos as the work progresses, but it’s all top secret, as usual.
Here is the sign in front of the pool building, put up after we were gone:
Friday, September 27 2024:
Finally some background:
We’d been told that the Riverbank pool would re-open “winter 2025“; this was after a projected 3-month closing, put out about a year ago, and, more recently, something we could interpret as a gap of 4 months (completion “early January”) and finally the vaguer Winter in view of the “many uncertainties” involved; for this reason there could be no contracted completion date.
From public information filed by the NYS Office of Parks Recreation and Historic Preservation (public if you know how and where to search for it) we now learn that there is indeed a completion date for the filter plant contractor — B&B Contracting LLC — February 26 2025 — and February 3 2025 for the bulkhead replacement contractor Sanz Construction Inc. For those of you who can squeeze more info from available official details, the whole entry is here:
https://wwe2.osc.state.ny.us/transparency/contracts/contracttransactions.cfm?Contract=0000000000000000000145410
and here:
https://wwe2.osc.state.ny.us/transparency/contracts/contracttransactions.cfm?Contract=0000000000000000000145030
Why be concerned with this? It’s useful to know as much as possible about this renovation, seems to me, first for planning alternative pools, since it looks now more like a six-months close than four.
But also a little sunlight on the proceedings may serve to help keep them moving along. Can the work still cost more and take longer? “Current Contract Amount” is the way it frames the $967,500.00 to Sanz and the $2,600,497 to B&B. We don’t know what carrots or sticks if any exist to encourage timely completion.
Outsiders who claim experience of this kind of work tell me it will take at least a year, maybe 18 months! Let’s hope this is wrong. Readers of the updated “Places to Swim in NYC” page on this website may have noticed the horrible example of CCNY with its fine pool just up the hill from Riverbank: suddenly closed without warning or explanation in 2013, apparently for renovation, and just now apparently getting ready to re-open after 11 years closed with information blackout to the anguish of would-be users among the students and on the faculty.
Readers of “Places to Swim in NYC“ will notice how chances to swim in this City have been squeezed over time by shrinking availability and rising cost, together with confounding indifference from many former providers. I’m not suggesting this will happen here; Parks has recently spent big on our behalf to keep the pool open during the extended gut renovation of the lockers and front of the building, a very new spirit in my 25+years swimming here. But like CCNY it does crave secrecy. We’d be wise to pay attention. [Special thanks here to Lewis Burgess]
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Friday September 20 2024:
Pool is empty and locked up tight.
The innards of the “filter plant“ inside a deep chamber in the southeast corner of the pool building (we pass the door to it on the way to the lobby doors if we come in from the 138th street pedestrian bridge) have now been broken up and carted away (photo below). This included a quantity of old pipes and concrete.
What’s next we’ve yet to learn — either they keep on digging or start on the replacement.
Meanwhile the doors to the lobby, so hard to open when the wind blows from the East I think it is, are being replaced or fixed and new door closer-opener assists being installed this day. Does this mean an end to the existential struggles to get in and out on windy days, especially for small elderly persons? “Well,I couldn’t say that … The trouble is “blow-through”, the wind goes right through the doors to the lockers and pool and though the whole building.“ (I wonder whether this is something only revolving doors could solve.)
The Park Director has attributed the long and indeterminate shutdown to the “unprecedented nature” of the job — presumably the first fix of this plant since the pool opened more than 30 years ago. Sounds like the Contractor’s reason for refusing to commit to a termination date — he doesn’t know what he will find. Before the four-month-plus announcement, the Park had publicly promised that a major factor in choosing a contractor would be the length of shutdown he required.
Life in West Harlem meanwhile continues at its accustomed pace, without the comings and goings of the Riverlappers.
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September 4 2024 — text of email on looming close of pool
Hi everyone.
For those of you who haven't been around lately there is good news and bad. The good is that the annual labor-day closing, for cleaning and light maintenance, has been pushed back a week: the last day will be this coming Sunday, September 8. If you know anyone who would like to be included in the early morning swimmers photo gallery, -- https://www.jerrybruck.com/early-morning-swimmers -- they should make it to the pool & make contact with me by Sunday morning. Portrait-making, after 8:15+, takes about 10 minutes once dressed and outside.
The bad news is that our beloved pool won't re-open for four months, at the earliest, as it seems now. It was our good fortune that the Park maintained the pool for swimming during renovation of the locker-rooms, toilets, showers, offices -- a gut renovation of the eastern half of the building. This will not be possible in the second phase which sees the replacement or major renovation of the two large bulkheads which are parked, early in the morning, at the north end of the pool and moved, just before 9am, toward the center in order to make two twenty-five yard pools; and the rebuilding of what they call the "filter plant" which includes the water circulation pumps, diatomaceous earth filters, bromine mixing set-up and so on. This will presumably involve much digging, pipe replacement, who knows what plumbing and meantime it will be impossible to maintain safe water chemistry.
We knew this would be coming more than a year back; last fall the Park expected the disruption to last about three months and said that compression of the work schedule was a major ask of the contractors applying for the job. It seems they were not able to obtain a fixed completion date from the winning (low) bidder and the unofficial estimate slips from January to February and now "winter".
Meanwhile, in re the planet: fellow early morning swimmer John Mark Rozendaal, a leading maestro as teacher and performer on the baroque cello, has now dedicated himself to the fight against catalyzers of climate change. Here's how it's going:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/aug/08/citibank-climate-protest-new-york
https://newrepublic.com/article/184875/climate-protest-cellist-citibank-arrest
I'll send updates in future when there is new info. Good luck meantime finding an alternative place to swim; these are fewer and cost more every year.
/Jerry