Mary Moss Park Pool to Reopen Monday, July 13

The Mary Moss Park Pool on Wednesday night, July 8. The white spots are where plaster is chipped.
The Mary Moss Park Pool on Wednesday night, July 8. The white spots are where plaster has worn away.

The Mary Moss Park Pool in the John Witherspoon neighborhood is scheduled to open again on Monday, July 13, officials said.

The pool has been closed since Wednesday afternoon for repairs after a recreation department employee cut his foot while walking in the pool. The plaster pool surface was worn out and needed to be repaired. The repair is a quick fix meant to last through the summer.

The town plans to renovate and expand the park.

“There is no hard timeline is in place yet for renovations to the park, but once we begin the community feedback process this fall we may begin to have a sense of whether the project can happen before summer 2016,” Recreation Director Ben Stentz said.

“If project doesn’t happen before summer 2016, we will need to reevaluate conditions of the pool in spring 2016,” he said.

4 Comments

  1. I think renovation in this instance means the pool will be demolished and replaced with a sprayground. The pool has considerable historical significance, in that it is the last wading pool remaining from a former era when each park in town had a counselor and wading pool during the summer. Rather than getting shuttled around by parents, kids would simply head to the nearest neighborhood park each day for supervised activities. One park would play another in various sports. I didn’t experience this myself, but it must have given kids a sense of being rooted in their neighborhoods, and freed up the parents.

  2. I don’t get it. I drive down John St. regularly and I’ve never seen this park used (what between 9 – 5, Memorial Day – Labor Day?). The $6m stainless-steel town pool is 1/3 of a mile away and is open to all.
    .
    Why is this pool still there? Is it a vestige of the town’s guilt over how people in this neighborhood were treated in the past? Is it an extra job or two that the Parks Dept doesn’t want to eliminate?

    1. This pool is only open during the month of July and is used by many neighborhood families as well as Princeton Nursery School. The fabulous Community Park Pool is “open to all” but only if you can pay. The Mary Moss pool serves an important role in one of our Princeton communities. (I guess just like the many many private swim clubs in Princeton whose residents could also be told to simply head to CP pool.)

    2. Mary Moss Park was opened about 80 years ago, and played an important part in the childhood, and memories, of Witherspoon-Jackson neighborhood residents. I sat in the park with a friend between 5-6 pm in early May (before the pool was reopened), and 3-4 neighborhood families with children came through to play on the equipment there. The families were black, white and Latino – a wonderful way for people to get to know their neighbors.

      Personally, I hope the wading pool will be retained in the renovation. It does have tremendous historical significance.

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