Westside residents can dive into a new neighborhood pool by summer 2025, after their decades-old swimming hole closed for good last year.
They just don’t know where, exactly — yet.
Kansas City officials are deciding between replacing the now-shuttered Jarboe Pool on the northern bluffs of the Westside or building a new outdoor pool at the Tony Aguirre Community Center on West Pennway Street. The new pool — wherever it’s located — will cost $3 million, all funded by city bonds. The city council unanimously approved the last $1 million on Thursday. The Parks and Recreation Department projected that the new pool will open on Memorial Day 2025.
Last November, voters approved $125 million in bonds to improve city parks, including its water facilities. The legislation city council passed on Thursday allocates $14.75 million of those bonds to fund improvements and repairs to 25 of the city’s aquatic facilities — including the $1 million for the Westside pool project.
The old Jarboe Pool opened in 1955 and closed in 2022. Kansas City’s Parks and Recreation Department closed the Jarboe Pool — and two other city pools at Arbor Villa and Ashland Square — because it was no longer considered sanitary.
Those three facilities are “drain and fill” pools, meaning they are emptied and refilled every day and do not have a filtration system. The pools were cleaned by draining or by adding chemicals.
Fourth District Councilmembers Eric Bunch and Crispin Rea held a community meeting at the Tony Aguirre Community Center on Sep. 26 to discuss the two site locations with residents.
Westside resident Jerry Roseburrough said he doesn’t have a preference on the pool’s location.
“In the end, we have to do what’s good for the kids,” he said. “It’s wonderful they’re gonna do something, finally.”
If the Westside builds its new pool at the Tony Aguirre Community Center, it will abut the existing indoor pool. Consultants with Waters Edge Aquatic Design, a local engineering firm that works on aquatic parks, said the $3 million would allow for a water slide and a water playground for toddlers in the outdoor area. The outdoor pool could also be deep enough for diving.
An outdoor pool at Tony Aguirre would also allow visitors to use existing bathrooms and facilities, versus having to build them from scratch.
“Let's utilize that, maximize it, increase participation here, and then add new amenities to the outside,” said Lauren Ozburn, an aquatics consultant with Waters Edge Aquatic Design.
Javier Perez is a longtime Westside who was involved in restoring the Jarboe Pool – but at a Westside community meeting comparing that site to the Tony Aguirre Community Center, Perez said the latter seems like the better option.
“I grew up in this community and I swam in Jarboe Pool — or waded,” Perez said. “So I just want that for other kids. Sometimes old people plant trees that shade they will never sit under. So it's for the new kids.”
Ozburn said a new pool at Jarboe would be slightly smaller than what is there now.
She said the old pool basin would need to be replaced with a new one.
John Garcia grew up on the Westside and remembers swimming in the Jarboe Pool. He’d like the pool to stay there, for its sentimental value.
“I was up there in 1958, ‘59, ‘60s,” Garcia said. “I like that location.”
Garcia said he also worries about the cost for families to use the future pool.
Ozburn said rebuilding a new facility at Jarboe Pool would not come with the extra amenities that residents would see if the pool were at Tony Aguirre — like water slides — because of the cost of tearing out the old pool basin and building a new one.
“The more pool basin we have to build, that means more deck, more piping, more filtration costs,” Ozburn said at the Westside meeting. “That all starts to add up.”
