Pooling their resources

Cuscaden Pool will be closed this summer while city officials decide what to do about leaks at the historical swimming facility.

"We have some returning problems we ran into last year," said Linda Carlo, who supervises Tampa's parks and recreation department.

The pool was built at Cuscaden Park in 1937 during the Great Depression with labor hired through the federal work program of President Franklin Roosevelt. It was named for Tampa pioneer Arthur W. Cuscaden, who planted one of the city's first orange groves and served on the Tampa City Council and the Hillsborough County School Board.

The two-story red-brick facility has lockers and classrooms on the first floor. A promenade offers vistas of the V.M. Ybor neighborhood and Ybor City.

More than six years ago the city spent about $3 million of local and federal tax money to restore the pool.

The bowl-shaped pool with an art deco vibe is one of a handful of remaining above-ground swimming pools among more than 50 designed by architect Wesley Bintz.

A maze of chain-link fencing now encloses the pool and park. On a recent morning, a man slept on a picnic bench. On another day, women watched toddlers at the park's playground.

In its heyday, the park and pool drew up to 2,000 people on warm weekends for a swim or a baseball game on one of two diamonds.

Intersocial, West Tampa, Cigar Factory, Smokers and Negro leagues played ball on the fields. Sunday double-headers pulled in crowds. Players included Hall of Famer Al Lopez, Tony La Russa and former Tampa Bay Rays manager Lou Piniella.

The baseball fields eventually gave way to two soccer fields.

The pool was closed in the late 1990s because of leaks. As many as 200 children a day from the Ybor Boys & Girls Club next door walked over for a swim during the summer. They had to be bused to other locations when the pool closed.

The city has three year-round pools open at Cyrus Greene Community Center, Loretta Ingraham Recreation Complex and Sulphur Springs Park. Seasonally operated facilities that will open Memorial Day weekend include the Danny Del Rio Pool, Bobbie Hicks Pool and pools at Copeland, Martin Luther King Jr. and DeSoto parks.

In addition to Cuscaden, Roy Jenkins Pool on Davis Islands and Williams Park pool in East Tampa are closed and in need of repair money.

About $150,000 will be spent to hire a consultant to devise a plan to waterproof Cuscaden's pool deck and upgrade the filtration system, Carlo said. But there is no money identified for repairs, she said.

The renovations completed in 2005 followed the pool's original design, which did not have a drain system around the facility's outer walls. During heavy rainfalls, water overflows and collects on the deck, leaking into rooms below, Carlo said.

The pool is drained.

The city's contract administration department last week was working on estimated repair costs. Tampa City Council has asked that a report on the pool's status be given June 3.

Other pools that have closed in recent years for maintenance and repairs include the Roy Jenkins Pool at Davis Islands and the Williams Park pool in East Tampa.

"We do not believe the leaks are related to previous work or work under warranty," said David Vaughn, the city's purchasing director. Funding "is in the hopper with other capital projects."

The pool is not all that will be empty this year.

Although the playground and ball fields will be open, the city plans no summer youth programs, which in part rely on classrooms on the first floor below the raised pool. Enrollment in after-school programs dropped significantly when the city raised its recreation fees in October.

The city has since said no child in financial need will be denied participation in an after-school or summer program. As of last week, parks officials said only four children had registered at Cuscaden and were transferred to programs at other parks including DeSoto and Cyrus Greene.