The Phillips Community Center Pool has once again gotten a repreive from destruction after the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board (MPRB) voted to postpone filling it with cement in for six months. The pool originally was scheduled to be filled in on April 1, but won a one month delay because of opposition from community members. Over the last several weeks, Robert Albee with Ventura Villages as well as other leaders from Phillips have been campaigning to save the pool, through meetings, a flurry of emails, letters, and a petition.
Recently State Senator Linda Berglin wrote to the Park Board Commissioners requesting they delay the pool’s destruction for six months. This would serve “to provide the Phillips community with adequate time to assess and recommend alternative solutions to demolition of the facility,” Berglin wrote. She suggested that remodeling the current pool may be more cost effective than building a new one somewhere else, and said that a pool addressed a critical health and wellness issue within the Phillips neighborhood.
Kevin Winge, Executive Director of Open Arms of Minnesota, Mary Watson, Co-chair of Franklin Area Business Association, and others have all written to the park board urging them to delay making the decision.
According to Midtown Phillips News, the park board discussed delaying the pool’s destruction at a meeting on April 7. Commissioner Scott Vreeland requested at the meeting to have feedback on what the Park Board expected out of a community meeting scheduled for April 19 at 6:30 at Stewart Park. Midtown News reports that following Vreeland’s request, a thirty minute discussion resulted in a motion by Commissioner John Olson, seconded by Vreeland, to delay destroying the pool for 6 months. The vote passed unanimously.
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