Norristown pool reopens with hope for better future
A Norristown neighborhood is to be awash in music, splashing, cheers, and laughter Saturday as the historic George Washington Carver Community Center pool is resurrected.
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A Norristown neighborhood is to be awash in music, splashing, cheers, and laughter Saturday as the historic George Washington Carver Community Center pool is resurrected.
Once the party is over, however, organizers will resume the tough slog of rebranding, raising money, and proving to the community that the center can be self-sustaining for years to come.
"We have to get through this season, and we have to validate whether or not the community really wants these types of programs," said the Rev. Byron Craig, who leads the new board of directors, installed in October.
The pool was shuttered last summer for the first time since its founding in 1960, when the community banded together in response to two black children's drowning in a swimming hole because they were barred from whites-only pools.
The Carver Center is the only public pool in Norristown, and serves many low-income families that can afford neither the trek nor the cost of neighboring townships' larger and more modern aquatic centers.
Some in the community were devastated when the pool closed. Others viewed it as a symbolic loss, a facility too rooted in nostalgia to adapt for modern times.
Carver's funding, reliant for the most part on government subsidies and donations, had fluctuated wildly over the last decade. Years of deferred maintenance left the pool cracked, the pumps broken, and water leaking in the gymnasium.
Even when a donor stepped forward with $35,000 last year to make the necessary repairs, the center could not accept it because it had lost its nonprofit status after several years of missed tax filings.
This week, the basketball court smelled of fresh varnish, volunteers painted a mural overlooking Arch Street, and crisp black tiles spelled out "GWC" from the bottom of the resurfaced pool.
With its IRS issues resolved and the donation delivered, the pool reopened, and the new board is looking at a long-term strategy and programs that will bring the most revenue for the lowest cost.
"We're trying to get to a place where it's not just trying to survive," Craig said. "There has to be a business mind-set, ways to generate income."
The entry fee - which had long been $3, or free for those willing to pick weeds or pick up trash - has been raised to $5. The center has also added a family season pass and discounts for local community groups, in the hope of drawing more customers.
Once the revenue begins flowing and the center has proved itself stable, Craig said, it may start applying for grants.
James Fasola, a legislative aide to State Rep. Matt Bradford (D., Montgomery) who has been working with the Carver board, said that grant viability was still a few years off, but that the board was moving in the right direction.
Yahnae Weldon, recently hired as the center's first full-time staff member, has a full slate of ideas to move Carver into the future: senior singles nights, youth sleepovers, Muay Thai, yoga, cooking classes, fitness training, do-it-yourself workshops.
The true test, Weldon said, will be finding out which programs are attractive enough to turn neighbors into customers.
"It feels like you're on line for the race. You sit there. You have a nervous anxiety. You don't know what's going to happen," said Weldon, who ran track at Norristown High School. "But you've been trained and groomed to do the best you can."
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