If you’ve ever been to New York City and thought about swimming in the East River, you probably got close enough to see the water and thought to yourself, “Nope.” + POOL is on a mission to change that. They want to build a giant, plus -shaped pool in the middle of the East River. The pool will be filled with filtered water from the river, essentially creating a giant pool Brita filter to keep the garbage, sediment and dead mobsters out.
This idea is so crazy it just might work. They already have a long list of supporters and their advisory board includes local politicians among other prominent figures. They have already run successful filtration tests and are dangerously close to reaching their next funding goal.
The pool will be 50m in each direction and four lanes wide in each arm, making for some potentially epic races if it’s ever used for competition. The pool will be five feet deep an segmented, as seen below, into different sections for different uses.
To fund their crazy, albeit seemingly extremely well-thought-out scheme, + POOL is running a series of Kickstarter campaigns based around individuals and groups sponsoring individualized, engraved tiles to be used in the pool’s construction. One copy of the tile will be sent to the sponsors and one copy will be used in the pool’s construction. Once all 70,000 pool tiles are sponsored, + POOL will have the full budget necessary to build the pool. Their current campaign is focused on raising money for a “Float Lab” to be built this summer to test the materials and construction for the concept.
For those of you who don’t know about Kickstarter yet, it’s fairly simple. Start-ups like + POOL use Kickstarter to crowd fund projects and launch their ideas off the ground. Basically, you pledge a certain amount of money, which you only pay if the project ends up reaching its goal and getting funded. In return for pledging, you receive a token reward (pool tile here) based on the amount of your pledge. In this case, the project is nearly funded, but only has a short period of time left to raise pledges (until Friday morning at 10:30 am Eastern), so they really need your support. Check out their promo video below and visit the + POOL Kickstarter page here for more info about the project and ways to help them out.
I’m impressed that a whale and a seal can survive in the East River and my god that whale is like 50m in length!
having lived in NYC for many years (and very near where the depiction has this pool located) I can tell you without hesitation that though a great idea this will never happen or work for so many reasons…google “McCarren Park Pool” to see a few examples
After reading a few articles, this strikes me as gross mismanagement. I understand the reasoning to keep it free, but it seems to be causing serious problems. They should consider implementing a pool pass with a refundable deposit that gets revoked if the patron is banned. Hopefully a non-city-owned pool would be a little better run.
Reading everyone’s comments has definitely opened my eyes to the possibilities. Now I realize the positives far outweigh the negatives.
Swam in the East River two years ago for the Brooklyn Bridge Swim. I found the water quality to be similar to San Francisco Bay. Recommend the swim. While I was in New York for the race, trained at the John Jay Pool on 78th street, only 48 yards long but right next to the East River, and thanks to Mayor , the price was right, it was free. A lot better than paying $35 for a daily drop in at Asphalt Green
This is an awesome idea, especially for a city where so few kids learn to swim, but unfortunately I doubt it will happen. Don’t get me wrong, I wish them luck, but I’m a bit cynical.
First, there are a lot of logistical problems. Do you have a ferry take people out to it? What to do you do in the 6-8 months where it’s too cold to swim outdoors? With 8 million NYCers, how do you limit crowds? If you charge, it’s only available to people who can afford a private gym anyways. Who will insure something like this?
Second, getting it sited will be a feat. Even opening a gas station in Manhattan is near impossible,… Read more »
It’s tethered to the side of the river and will have a walkway leading out. My guess is, it’ll be docked during the winter time or maybe bubbled like they do with these kinds of pools in Europe (it’s essentially a big raft). I would doubt the insurance from a swimmer standpoint would be any different than a regular pool. The crowds do seem like an issue, though being too popular is kind of a good issue to have.
If you take a look at their Kickstarter page, they have some pretty important backers including local council members. I think actually getting approval to build it was at the top of the priority list.
I hope your optimism is warranted, and my pessimism is not. Good luck to them.
I tried to mention this via The Verge and Twitter a few weeks back. Nice to see you guys mentioned it. If you look close in the last picture you can see “Lia Neal is so rad.”
You can also see G.O.A.T. on the left… Lia Neal is a very nice touch from the graphics team.
This is a very cool idea and if it encourages more kids in that huge population base to learn to swim it’s even better.
Magnificent!