After a yearlong closure for renovations, Fort Worth’s historic Forest Park Pool reopened with a splash — literally, from several City Council members.
At a ribbon-cutting ceremony May 24 to celebrate the reopening, Mayor Mattie Parker and council members Elizabeth Beck, Jeanette Martinez, Chris Nettles and Alan Blaylock commemorated the event with cannonballs into the pool.
“I believe this pool is just as important as a fire station or police station,” Parker said prior to her splashdown. “Because really it’s about community and bringing people together. I can just picture how special not only this history is here on this site but what it’s going to look like moving forward.”
The Olympic-sized pool closed in May 2023 to be rebuilt and modernized as part of a $15 million project included in the city’s voter–approved $560 million bond from 2022. It will officially open for its first swim of the season at noon May 25.
Council member Elizabeth Beck, whose district includes the pool, told the Report she’s glad it is “going to remain a really bright spot in our city’s amenities.”
The Forest Park Pool, originally constructed in 1922 for $20,000, according to Director of Park & Recreation Richard Zavala, and is one of only two city-owned pools in Fort Worth. The pool, which is adjacent to the Fort Worth Zoo, was rebuilt in 1969 and renovated in the 1990s and 2012.
Starting in 2021, city leadership began conversations on whether to renovate, rebuild or replace the pool once again. At the time, they said the pool’s drained city resources and questioned whether it was necessary for the city to provide such an amenity.
Before the current renovation plan was finalized, city staff had proposed a $7.5 million project for the pool to be replaced with a smaller and shallower leisure pool. That plan ultimately died after pushback from residents who wanted to keep the pool Olympic-sized.
If you go
What: Forest Park Pool
Where: 2850 Park Place Ave., Fort Worth
Hours: Noon to 6 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday
Pricing:
- Children ages 17 and under: $5
- Adults: $6
- Seniors and veterans: $4
Find more info here.
Under the new configuration, the aquatic center includes a nearly 492,000-gallon Olympic pool with eight 50-meter swimming lanes, a new bathhouse, a 60,000-plus-gallon leisure pool and play features, including a water playground and slide. At capacity, it can accommodate 351 swimmers, according to the city’s website.
The Forest Park Pool project could set a precedent for future aquatic projects and how they’re incorporated into bond programs, Beck said. Following resident pushback on the plan to reduce the pool’s size in 2021, city leaders were eventually pressured into allocating additional dollars to preserve the pool.
“We saw a lot of community support for this particular project, and it got people talking about aquatics,” Beck told the Report. “The bond is reflective of what we need and what we want, so when we start having discussions for the 2026 bond and what projects should or shouldn’t be in there, I think the community should stay as engaged and as active as they were in this project. That’s how we know what to prioritize.”
Cecilia Lenzen is a government accountability reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact her at cecilia.lenzen@fortworthreport.org or @bycecilialenzen on X.
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