Fourth-generation Sulphur Springs resident Charlie Adams remembers when the neighborhood pool opened in 2000.
He only got 30 minutes to swim that day because the line going down Nebraska Avenue was so long.
“It was worth it,” he said. “It was just the excitement, the joy, the memories of when it first opened.”
The pool he learned to swim in, one of Tampa’s 12 public pools, closed in 2023 when water from the nearby Hillsborough River seeped under the pool’s foundation.
Because of the closure, Adams’ daughter Adriana never got to swim in the pool her dad grew up using.
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Without the pool, some residents of Sulphur Springs, an underserved neighborhood north of Old Seminole Heights, are missing the sense of community.
"There's not social outlets for the youth and elders and people just in general… for health, mental health, your overall wellbeing, a sense of culture and pride,” Adams said.
On Thursday, the Tampa City Council approved $1.8 million to see how bad the damage is and then begin stabilizing the pool.
“We will see where we are after that,” Councilwoman Lynn Hurtak said in a brief discussion of the plan during the meeting. “But it absolutely is moving along. Engineers take a while."
The funds will go to construction firm On Track Life Solutions for what the city is calling “Phase 1” of the restoration project, which will involve pumping mortar under the pool.
“It is bringing back a sense of culture, back a sense of pride in the community, a sense of identity,” Adams said.
The pool was damaged after a neighboring seawall failed and let water seep through.
“Due to the proximity of the spring well structure, delays in repairing the site could result in full failure of the pool and shoreline, which could pose a hazard to the well system and damage the foundation,” the agenda item said.
But for Haley Bruns, who moved to the neighborhood in 2019, the project is taking too long.
One of the reasons she chose her house in Sulphur Springs is because the pool was just over a mile away.
She taught her son how to swim there and made friends with other families.
“Not having [the pool] has been really sad,” Bruns said. “Losing the pool and that sense of community has had a big impact on us."
Without that shared space, Bruns doesn’t have the place she made most of her community connections and swam laps for a low-impact exercise.
Other public pools, like one in Davis Island, are too far away for her to go to regularly.
She said her son, who is three, has fallen behind on swim lessons as well.
While there are parks near her neighborhood, she said they aren’t as safe for kids to play in, with people sleeping on benches and children finding used needles.
The pool and its adjacent playground are currently surrounded by a locked fence.
Bruns said the funding is a great first step, but expects she will have moved by the time the pool reopens.
There is no timeline for when the pool could be reopened.
