More than 50 people attended the opening of an outdoor pool in the Westside neighborhood on a blistering Monday afternoon.
The opening of the highly-anticipated pool at the Tony Aguirre Community Center came after the Kansas City Parks and Recreation Department closed the Jarboe pool in 2022 for sanitation reasons, and then voters in November 2022 approved $175 million in city bonds to improve the city’s parks and recreation centers.
Westside community members now have direct access to an affordable pool — adults pay $5, children pay $2 and seniors pay $3 — and no longer have to travel across the state line to swim at pools in Fairway or Prairie Village.
Westside business owner and resident Cindy Wegerer lived in the neighborhood when the Jarboe pool was still open and was excited to see the city reinvest in the community.
“Everybody has been excited — really just kind of crossing our fingers that we could make this happen here,” Wegerer, 49, said. “And now that we crossed that milestone, it's just really fun to celebrate with the kids and everyone in the community that worked hard to get it here.”
The construction of the pool also marked a significant step for the Westside, a once predominately-Latino neighborhood whose rapid gentrification has pushed out families who have lived there for generations.
Crispin Rea, 4th District at-Large council member, acknowledged the deep racism behind public pools. Segregationist policies since the 1920s still impact children of color more than 100 years later.
“We know what the drowning rates are for Black and brown kids in neighborhoods that don’t have access to pools,” he said. “While it’s great to build on our amenities and recreational opportunities, this is also an opportunity for folks to learn life-saving skills, and that is swimming.”
City officials broke ground on the $4.3 million project, led by Dondlinger and Sons Construction, in January 2025. For company vice president of commercial construction Eric Swenson, the tight deadline, “blood” and “sweat” was all worth it.
“You can see the crowd out here today enjoying the slides, enjoying this play feature, and enjoying the pool,” Swenson said. “It’s a lot of satisfaction.”
Arlyn Herrera, 5, said everyone can enjoy the space.
“It’s all in the world. The swimming pool is for everybody,” Herrera said. “Everybody for every single pool, every single jump and everything time.”
Sandy Aguirre paid tribute to her late father Tony Aguirre — a Westside resident and sportsman who advocated for better schools and neighborhoods and the community center’s namesake — at the end of the press conference.
Aguirre remembered when one of her father’s players asked if she was ever upset that he was out in the community so much.
“I said, ‘No, I felt like we had the biggest family in the world,’ because we knew everybody down here and everybody loved my dad,” she said.
