Closed since 2022 due to a leaky liner, South Bend is officially moving to demolish the Potawatomi Park Pool as it seeks to make other improvements to the park.
Those changes are part of the larger River Park Neighborhood draft plan the city unveiled recently and is taking public input on this week. More changes include a focus on Mishawaka Avenue as a business corridor and extending 20th Street as an entrance to Potawatomi Park.
South Bend Mayor James Mueller said replacing the pool is cost prohibitive for the foreseeable future — at more than $5 million just to build — though a federal grant is helping pay for a pool at Kennedy Park on the city’s west side.
"Unfortunately Potawatomi is just outside the eligible area for a grant like that from the federal government," Mueller said. "We're talking multiple millions of dollars to create a pool and of course, the annual operations and upkeep are not cheap either."
DeAndre Barton is the president of the River Park neighborhood association and he understands the city’s decision on the pool, but wishes more maintenance was done to prevent reaching this point. Barton is 22 and lives near IUSB and said he has fond memories of playing with his friends at the pool when he grew up in River Park.
"I remember growing and going there to hang out with my friends becuase it was something we could do together without having to make our own fun," he said.
Barton and other neighbors like Dan Kane took more issue with the city wanting to extend 20th street as an entryway into the park, fearing it will eat into the area's greenspace.
"What they're basically doing is taking out the swimming pool and replacing it with a road," Kane said. I think a swimming pool belongs in a park and a road doesn't."
City planners say a more formal entry is better for the park since the Potawataomi Zoo attracts far more visitors than it did 20 years ago and traffic on Wall Street often gets backed up.
Residents are invited to share feedback with city planners on Tuesday at the River Park Branch Library until 6 p.m.
