Pool to Float in East River with a Summer Test, Ready for Big Public Splash by ‘25

New York City will have a new swimming pool, and it’s not like any other pool found in the city, or anywhere in the United States. The so-called +Pool, named after its proposed shape in the form of a mathematical “plus” sign, will float in the East River, most likely somewhere off of lower Manhattan although the exact location is up in the air.

Planners have designed the freshwater pool to draw river through a membrane filtration system.

People will be able to walk to the pool via walkways connecting it to land.

The shape of the 9,000 square-foot pool necessitates four separate smaller pools each occupying a different axis, which the designers envisioned would fulfill different purposes—one for kids, another for lap swimmers, the third and fourth for loungers and water activities, respectively. Over one million gallons of water will be filtered daily along the pool’s walls, like a “giant strainer dropped in the river,” according to its website.

The + Pool was first conceived by architects Archie Lee Coates, Jeff Franklin, Dong-Ping Wong, and Oana Stanescu, who sought a permanent fixture that could provide swimmers with the same kind of experience as taking a dip into the river itself, before pollution and boat traffic made the it too unsafe. Swimming in the river was banned in 1938.

Until then, the practice was popular especially among lower-income New Yorkers, who do not typically have access to private pools or cars to get to ocean beaches. Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams spoke about the inequality of access and safety among the population in her remarks at an event announcing the pool’s anticipated construction on January 5. “Low-income communities, communities of color, have suffered decades of disinvestment in swimming facilities,” Hochul said.

Adams added that + Pool was an opportunity to go into communities that were historically ignored. “I didn’t have a swimming pool in my community,” he said. “I had a water hose and hopefully the fire hydrant was turned on. That was my pool.”

Construction of the pool comes after more than a decade of pushing by Friends of + Pool, the organization that has been rallying support for it since 2010. Although it raised $314,000 in its online Kickstarter campaign and received praise from the likes of Time magazine, the project stalled as advocates worked to find backing in Albany and City Hall. “Since its inception, one of the main challenges for + POOL was that a permit for a pool using filtered river water didn’t exist,” said Gabriel Einsohn, a spokesperson for the + POOL team. “The architecture and filtration design science is only half of what the + POOL team had to accomplish. The other half was convincing the government to introduce new legislative standards.”

But the campaigning finally appeared to pay off in 2019, when New York City’s Economic Development Corporation began searching for operators who could manage the pool’s construction. Two years later, + Pool received the city’s official approval to begin construction. Gov. Hochul is behind the project, with funding for the $16 million project included in her $150 million state investment in expanding swimming access, reducing drowning deaths, and preparing residents for extreme heat waves caused by climate change. The project was originally estimated cost between $20 and $25 million to build.

“We’ve spent the last year and a half working with city and state agencies to create a pathway for river swimming and establish regulations for public access where there were none,” said Kara Meyer, managing director of + Pool.

A 2,000 sq ft version of the pool will be installed along the river this summer as a final test towards securing permitting and confirming the final exact location, but there will be no public swimming. The final version of the pool is anticipated to be completed and open to the public in 2025.