Not cool
Closing the pool at the Venice Island Recreation Center is just part of upcoming changes there.
It’s a sunny Wednesday afternoon and 13-year-old Eddie Edwards, little brother Brice, 10, and cousin Marcus Harris, 13, frolic about the Venice Island Recreation Center in Manayunk.
Shirtless, in bathing suits and passing a basketball back and forth, the three enjoy their last opportunity to use the community pool, one of the amenities at the aging center.
The pool will be shut down to make room for an underground water-storage tank that the Philadelphia Water Department is installing as part of a water-protection plan designed to keep the sanitary sewer and stormwater from mixing.
Under current conditions, heavy storms will cause the sewer to fill up, allowing sewage to overflow into the nearby Schuylkill River, said Joanna Dahme, watersheds program manager for the PWD.
And while the project will undoubtedly benefit the community in terms of safety and cleanliness, some residents, such as the three young recreation-center users, are unhappy about the move.
“I grew up here, learned how to swim, play basketball,” Eddie Edwards said. “I think they can shut other pools down that aren’t really doing anything.”
For Edwards, the problem is both economical and practical; he can walk to the pool from his home mere blocks away, and going to a new community pool would mean his parents would have to drive him there, no doubt a burden during these times of elevated gas prices.
“There’s a whole bunch of kids who come down here who live right around the corner,” Edwards said.
But Harris said it’s not only youngsters from Manayunk who use the pool.
“Kids from all over — North Philadelphia, Germantown — go to this pool,” he said. “We really don’t have a lot of other places to go. I don’t think they should shut it down.”
Dahme, of the water department, said it was a difficult decision to close the pool, but it was one that needed to be made, since the three-million-gallon tank will help keep stormwater out of the river during large storms by diverting overflow into the tank.
“Our main goal is to stop that,” she said. “We don’t want sewage getting into our rivers and streams.”
The water department originally considered placing the tank under the Venice Island parking lot on Lock Street, but that plan was nixed after the business and residential community complained that it would add to an already strained parking situation.
The reason the tank has to be placed on Venice Island at all has to do with the fact that the sanitary sewer line runs parallel to the Manayunk Canal. The sewer line has problems with infiltration, which is the reason so much sewage collects in the canal, Dahme said.
But there is some good news for rec center users like Edwards and Harris: After construction of the tank is completed, the Venice Island recreation area will be totally rebuilt. And while plans will not include a pool — the city’s recreation department apparently is phasing out many of its pools because of maintenance issues — it is proposed to have a whole host of new amenities, including a “spray pool,” or water-sprinkler area for children, new basketball and tennis courts, hockey rink and a state-of-the-art performance center that will be a central point for theatrical performances citywide.
“The recreation department has a surprisingly good theater and dance program that has never been promoted,” said Kay Sykora, of the Manayunk Development Corp.
Sykora has a niece who has participated in the city’s performing-arts program, what she calls an under-utilized treasure, and the fact that the center is slated for Manayunk can be a real boost for the community.
“The opportunity this is going to present is huge,” she said. “There’s a lot of opportunity back here. You can either talk about what your losing or you can talk about the opportunities that can make this area very special.”
There is even talk of a possible in-river floating concept, where a portion of the Schuylkill could be sectioned off and used for recreation.
Alice Ballard, whose late mother, Ernesta, a well-respected Philadelphian whose list of accomplishments included developing the Philadelphia Flower Show and renovating the Logan Circle Fountain, is working on the in-river concept, a recreation option her mother longed to bring to the city.
“She had a lot of great ideas and she accomplished things that nobody thought you could accomplish,” Ballard said of her mother. “This project was her heart’s desire, and she left it with me when she died.”
The concept, which is strictly in the planning phase, would involve a sort of floating basket that would be tethered to booms on the river floor. There would be a seating arrangement around the outskirts for parents to watch their children as they played.
Ballard said a committee made up of various elected officials and other interested parties is currently studying the concept, with the first phase of a feasibility study, one funded by a $75,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation, already done. The architect working on the design is Mata Brunzama, who Ballard said created a similar floating concept in the Hudson River in New York.
“It’s a possibility, it’s an idea,” Ballard said. “It’s contemplated in the plan, but it’s certainly nothing that is approved.”
With all the planned upgrades, the young ones who grew up around the pool aren’t entirely convinced the newly planned area would serve their needs.
“What can kids possibly do with an amphitheater?” Edwards asked. “There’s nothing better than having this pool here.”
There are two other community pools in the Roxborough/Manayunk area — one at the Hillside Recreation Center and the other at the Kendrick Recreation Center, which are not too far away.
Despite some complaints among community members that city officials did not make the public fully aware of the extent of the Venice Island project, the water department’s Dahme said it had been discussed on many occasions, precisely because the center, and the pool in particular, saw regular use.
“Many years were spent on this kind of public outreach,” she said. “People really use the site. It was really a stakeholder-direct process.”
The idea of totally redoing the rec center once the storage tank is built stemmed from the city’s dedication to continue providing recreation to the Manayunk area, Dahme said.
“We do want to make sure that area is served,” she added.
Although the entire project is still in the design phase, Dahme said she hopes everything, from start to finish, will take about two years. Once the design plan is done, Dahme expects PWD, the recreation department and other local players to host a public meeting to keep residents abreast of the entire project. ••
Reporter Jon Campisi can be reached at 215-354-3038 or jcampisi@phillynews.com
