Reasons to Vote for Option A in Pool Survey

[John Hayden]

Reasons to Vote for Option A in the Mestizo Curtis Park Pool Survey

The Mestizo Curtis Park Pool Coalition is a grass roots group made of the diverse residents and stakeholders of the Five Points community who have come together to ensure that the Mestizo Curtis Park pool, pool house and associated public art, are designed and built to meet the needs of this diverse, historic community.  

The Mestizo Curtis Park Pool is an important historic, cultural and athletic institution in Five Points.  The pool, located in Denver’s oldest park, was originally built in 1936 and was the first pool to be integrated in the City of Denver.  Because people of color were not welcome at pools and swimming beaches in predominantly white neighborhoods of Denver, the Five Points pool in Mestizo Curtis Park played an extremely important role in the social, health and cultural development of the Five Points community.  

Originally Denver had four large 50-yard pools, Congress Park, La Alma Lincoln, La Raza and Mestizo Curtis Park.  The Mestizo Curtis Park pool also originally featured a diving well where generations of children learned the skill of diving and some, like Viola Salazar, would go on to become completive divers at the highest level of the sport.  

Over the years as the pools / parks have aged and been redeveloped, the pools in the mostly minority communities have been eliminated or greatly reduced in size.  La Raza’s pool was eliminated, La Alma Lincoln’s pool was reduced to 25 meters with a leisure pool and now the city has proposed the same fate for Mestizo Curtis Park, removing the large general-purpose pool and replacing it with a smaller pool and a leisure pool for play.  Conversely, just two years ago, the community of Congress Park in Southeast Denver, received a large increase in the size of their general-purpose pool, going from a 50 yard pool to a pool with both a 50-meter and 25-meter configuration and a small leisure pool.  

This discrepancy will result in poorer health outcomes and lower-level swimming skills for the minority children who are the largest group of users of the Mestizo Curtis Park pool.  While a leisure pool can be used to play and recreate, it does not replace the athletic swimming opportunities provided by a full size 50-meter general purpose pool.  In the general-purpose pool, people can swim, take swim lessons, practice and compete on swim teams, dive, learn and play water polo, learn synchronized swimming, take water aerobics classes and of course, play.  

We believe it is imperative that the children of Five Points have the same access to high quality athletic facilities that has been afforded to the children and families of more affluent communities.  In fact, it’s perhaps even more important for Five Points because the families in Five Points are less likely than families in Southeast Denver to be able to afford to send their children to private or suburban swimming facilities.  Historically this unequal access to high quality swimming facilities has resulted in more deaths from drowning among children of color who are three times more likely to drown than anglo children (USAA Swimming).  

The Five Points community has successfully lobbied for a new pool plan that includes a 50 meter pool and a medium size leisure pool.  A new survey is out asking Denver residents to vote for this option, designated option A in the Survey, or to vote for the plan Parks previously intended to build with a 25-meter pool and a large leisure pool, designated option B in the survey.  We respectfully ask that as many people as possible respond to the survey and select option A to preserve access to a premier athletic swimming facility for the children of North East Denver. Here is the link to the Survey. 

  www.surveymonkey.com/r/MestizoCurtisPool.