Indoor facilities at the McCarren Park Pool are slimy with water and salt damage because a contractor did a shoddy job when it renovated the construction before the 2012 reopening of the greenspace, a city-commissioned report charged.
The interestingly named engineering company Haks wrote the report in 2013 at the behest of the city, which was baffled as to why the bathhouses were weeping white grime just a year after the pool reopened.
But the city still has not fixed the bathhouses two years later, leaving the facilities covered with sticky stains, a situation park activists say is unacceptable.
“This is a management issue plain and simple which the agency refuses to acknowledge much less address,” said Geoffrey Croft of New York City Park Advocates. “The lack of addressing maintenance issues at the pool over the years is what caused it to be a $50 million dollar renovation in the first place.”
The city started construction on the Depression-ear pool, which had been shuttered since 1984, in 2008, allocating $50 million to the renovation of the pool and it surrounding indoor facility. It added a new recreation center, offices space, a gym, a community room, and multipurpose room.
But the contractors failed to properly seal the bond between the new mortar and the brick, reads the report.
“The masonry wall construction has many deficiencies which do not allow for proper drainage of the entrapped moisture,” says the report.
The report put the blame for the problems squarely on the contractor and designer.
“These deficiencies were caused primarily by poor workmanship during construction, but many of them can be also attributed to a deficient design and detailing,” it says.
The city refused to say if and when it will fix the bathhouse problem.
“When necessary, New York City Parks has worked quickly to make repairs to the pool,” said Parks spokeswoman Maeri Ferguson. “The city commissioned the HAKS report to better understand structural issues concerning the McCarren Pool complex.”
The city said the issues will not delay the opening of the pool, which is scheduled for June 27 — and not on Memorial Day, which a lot of people think.
