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Remember +Pool? You can be forgiven if you don’t. The proposed project has been floating around for years—pun intended, because +Pool is designed to bob serenely in New York’s rivers as it filters the surrounding waters to provide recreational swimming for city dwellers seeking relief from Gotham’s sweltering summers.
The design is shaped like the Red Cross logo to provide four different facilities catering to different swimming needs: A Kid's pool, a Sports pool, a Lap pool and a Lounge pool. But +Pool’s most unique feature is a filtration system built along its entire perimeter, transforming it, in essence, into a giant sieve meant to strain all the icky bacteria and contaminants that thrive in New York waterways. Estimates are that the system will be able to clean 600,000 gallons of water per day.
When +POOL was originally announced four years ago, the hope was to have it up and running by this summer. Well, it’s nowhere in sight, but that doesn’t mean +Pool’s boosters have been idle. After two Kickstarter campaigns in 2011 and 2013, they’ve raised $310,000, enough to have done a technology demonstration last summer. And this summer, +Pool’s organizer are conducting feasibility studies at ten different potential sites around town. They are Bush Terminal Park, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Domino Sugar Factory, Governor’s Island, Hallet’s Point, Hudson River Park, Hunter’s Point, St. George, Transmitter Park and Two Bridges. (Our bet is on Brooklyn Bridge Park, because, you know, Brooklyn is cool.) Once studies are completed +Pool’s design will be tweaked into various site-specific final forms to present to the city as part of the permit application process, after which +Pool will finally be constructed. But don’t just grab your swimming suit and head down to the waterfront just year. For the time being, +Pool will be facing a measurable dry spell.