Replacing the historic but dormant Griffith Park pool will likely take at least three years and cost $40 million, in addition to building a competition pool, a neighboring recreational pool and a rehabilitated pool house with a gender-neutral bathing facility, city officials and designers told Los Feliz residents at an open house Thursday night.
“The pool is being completely replaced. It's leaking like a sieve,” said Stephanie Kingsnorth, principal at the architecture firm Perkins Eastman, addressing about 50 community members in a room next to the park's visitor center.
Perkins Eastman, who is leading the design of the pool site, also worked on the Griffith Observatory renovation and expansion from 2002 to 2006, when the firm was known as Pfeiffer Partners.
As neighbors watch, an artist's rendering shows the proposed replacement of the Griffith Park pool and the rehabilitation of the pool house. The meeting was held in the Griffith Park Visitor Center Auditorium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The pool and pool house at Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard date to 1927, long before Interstate 5 was routed just east of the site in 1964. After decades as a popular spot for swimming lessons for children and recreational swimmers, the pool was closed amid COVID-19 pandemic measures in early 2020. When the city attempted to refill the pool, workers discovered it no longer contained water.
Early in planning to replace it, the city's Office of Engineering forecast construction costs of $28 million. City officials say the project is complicated because of the proximity of the freeway and the Los Angeles River.
Kingsnorth said the project is nearing the end of its design development stage and many details are still being discussed.
In place of the existing seasonal pool, schematic drawings now show a new year-round competition pool, 50 meters long, 25 yards wide and 3 feet, 6 inches to 12 feet, 9 inches deep.
Next door, drawings show a lap pool 25 yards long and 50 feet wide, with a gentle slope that is ADA compliant to about 4 feet deep.
The two-story pool house's red-tile roof, wood trellises and Spanish Colonial Revival features will look about the same on the outside, Kingsnorth said, and the rehabilitation will meet federal standards for historic structures.
But now some areas that were previously outdoors will be covered. An elevator and a second flight of stairs will be added inside, along with features to boost energy sustainability and comply with modern accessibility laws. Outdoor showers on site will be for rinsing only.
On the ground floor, the building's outdoor men's and women's locker rooms will merge into a larger, gender-neutral indoor area with private changing rooms and bathrooms, Kingsnorth said.
“Each bathroom and dressing room is a single room,” Kingsnorth said.
Kingsnorth said the gender-neutral locker room design was not required by state or federal restrictions, but was a priority for the city's Parks and Recreation Department. In projects like this, Kingsnorth said, “this is a more common thing for equity and inclusion.”
Community questions focused on pool features, public access, cost and effects of construction work.
“We're really looking forward to school going back, so the kids can learn to swim,” said Marian Dodge, a longtime area resident and former president of the Los Feliz Improvement Association.
The Griffith Park pool, seen here in 2023, has been closed since 2020, when city workers found major leak issues.
(Dania Maxwell / Los Angeles Times)
The pool site is within City Council District 4, represented by Nithya Raman, who was not present. His staff hosted the meeting and encouraged residents to send questions and comments to [email protected].
The next steps, according to a brochure from the city and the design firm, include creating construction documents (estimated to take six months), obtaining city permits (five months), selecting a construction contractor (five months), construction (18 months) and “project closing” (six months). If that schedule is met, completion would occur in just over 40 months, around July 2029.
“This is ambitious, but we are confident we can achieve it,” Kingsnorth said.
In an hour-long presentation, followed by about a dozen questions and answers, Kingsnorth was joined by city officials, including Ohaji Abdallah, deputy director of the architectural division of the Bureau of Engineering, and
Maha Yateem, senior supervisor of citywide recreation and aquatics for the Department of Recreation and Parks.
The plan calls for three rows of shaded concrete bleachers for spectators next to the competition pool. Yateem said the competition pool will include a trampoline, adding, “We're working on a location for that now.”
Because the project involves removing tons of materials from existing pools and bringing in new ones, “construction here is going to be pretty intense,” Abdallah said. He and Kingsnorth said the “transport route” for the construction trucks has not been decided, and Abdallah said he and other officials are discussing the plan's possible impact on the Los Feliz preschool, which is near the pool.
When considering construction costs and “soft costs,” such as design and environmental review, “I expect it to be around $40 million,” Abdallah said, adding that the project will compete with other city priorities for general fund dollars. He also noted that the current estimates were made “before the war started” in Iran and gas prices increased.
After the meeting, Kingsnorth said: “We are ready to pause if necessary due to the peripheral state of the world.”
