For the past 15 years, a group of designers and fundraisers has been pushing the idea of a plus sign-shaped pool, officially known as the + POOL, that would float in the East River.
And for many of those years, the + POOL was essentially a dead in the water (haha) project disavowed by its founder, and the nonprofit attached to it had pivoted to pushing for water safety and reforming regulations that limited when and where people could safely swim in New York City's rivers. That was, until last year, when Governor Kathy Hochul, desperate for a project to jam into her 2024 state budget and seemingly goaded by a New York Times op-ed about water safety, gave the project $12 million in state funding, with the City kicking in another $4 million.
The pool, or at least some actual, swimmable version of the pool, Hochul announced, would be open by the summer of 2025.
Except, as ever with this monorail of a project, that date has come and gone—and the pool will not be making an appearance this summer at all.
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