McCarren Pool was the eighth of eleven giant pools built by the Works Progress Administration to open during the summer of 1936. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia attended the dedication on July 31, 1936. With an original capacity for 6800 swimmers, the pool served as the summertime social hub for Greenpoint and Williamsburg. The building's vast scale and dramatic arches, designed by Aymar Embury II, typify the generous and heroic spirit of New Deal architecture.
The pool was closed in 1984. The reuse and reconstruction of the pool remained a contentious community issue for many years, until the community came to a consensus plan in 2001. The community sought to reconstruct the facility to encompass a skate park, an indoor recreation/performance center, and a smaller pool that could be converted to a seasonal ice rink. The plan was estimated to cost $26 million and had a good chance of receiving public funding, but unfortunately, the budgetary constraints of the City post-9/11 shelved the plan and the pool remained abandoned for the next few years.
In 2005, Clear Channel Entertainment and Sens Productions gave $250,000 to the City Parks Foundation, a private non-profit entity, to do basic stabilization and safety improvements to the pool structure. The first public event in the pool, a dance performance called Agora, was held by Sens Productions that summer. In the Summer of 2006, a number of free and cheap public events were held at the pool, including Jelly NYC's pool party series and the Williamsburg Film Festival. Clear Channel Entertainment's concert-promotion arm, Live Nation, put on a series of six concerts that were ticketed from $45-$52 (including ticket service fees).
n fall 2005, the City Parks Department sought an entity to manage the pool events for the summer of 2006, which many in the community interpreted to be a setup for a sweetheart deal with Clear Channel/LiveNation. In 2007, the pool is again being used for concerts, film screenings and other events. Many in the community would prefer that the pool be returned to its historic use as an active recreational facility, with some space dedicated to cultural events.
In the near-term, NYC Department of Parks and Recreation has committed to having the pool open for special events. As part of the 2005 rezoning of Greenpoint and Williamsburg the City appropriated $1 million in capital budget funds for restoration of the pool as a performance space, although the work has not yet begun. Also, $300,000 was allocated by the New York City Council in 2006 to support the construction of this seasonal rink.
In April, 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that reconstruction of the pool was being funded as part of the City's PlaNYC long-term planning initiative. Total budget has been announced as $50 Million. Design work is beginning in 2007, with construction slated to start by 2009.
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