POOL PLIGHT

still managed to sneak out a profit of $2,956.

By 1973, Dallas had 100 neighborhood pools, and every summer the Dallas Morning News celebrated them with a splash piece on pool culture featuring pictures of swim classes and families enjoying the cool waters. But by the 1980s, the pools dropped in popularity. Take Samuell-Grand, which at the time was newly renovated and began the decade in 1980 with an attendance high of 15,761 but slowly dropped to a low of 4,080 in 1989. Not surprisingly, the city began to look at its investments, especially considering some of the pools were more than 50 years old by then.

In 1984 the Dallas City Council announced plans to close six pools entirely, including Griggs Park (formerly Hall Street Negro Park) near East Dallas. Another 16 pools began operating on a reduced schedule, but Samuell-Grand and Tietze remained open.

Tietze nearly closed in 1994, when the city closed four of its 22 remaining full-sized pools. According to a Dallas Morning News article, it was on an early closure list because it had a leak that the city hoped to avoid paying to fix. But when the park department realized it was the fourth most utilized pool in the city, it de - termined there was enough revenue to be made to warrant repair.

Samuell-Grand, with its myriad recreational offerings and own financial support from the Samuell trust, mostly had avoided any threats of closure.

By 2000, the city was offering free days to entice more people into the pools. Then, it switched focuses entirely, investing heavily in “spraygrounds” instead. With contraptions that shoot, spray and dump water in all different sorts of ways, “spraygrounds” were cheaper to maintain because they don’t require lifeguards, and a 2003 voter-approved bond showed residents were in favor of the idea. Ridgewood Park opened in our neighborhood in 2006 after $446,000 in construction. It was such a success, the area was flooded with traffic; by 2008 it required “residents only” parking signs.

The pools again came under fire in 2012, when the city considered replacing neighborhood pools with smaller water facilities, citing the high cost of operating them. Tietze once again faced the threat of closure. Advocate columnist Angela Hunt encouraged residents to voice their concerns for their local pools and the city listened. Instead of shuttering, they decided to invest millions of dollars, transforming basic public pools into watery playgrounds with slides, shade structures and concession stands.