Availability of open Chicago Park District swimming pools varies widely across the city

The Chicago Park District this month clipped short the swimming season at 11 outdoor swimming pools, highlighting a disparity in the number of operating days at pools across the city, a Chicago Sun-Times analysis shows.

Six of those pools had the fewest swimming days last year among all the city’s pools.

This year, scheduled access to pools varied widely, from 72 days to just 50 days. The pools on the lower end included the 11 that only learned on a few days’ notice that they would close on Aug. 10, rather than on Aug. 17 as promised.

In 2024, public access at the city’s 50 outdoor public pools also included a huge range, from 43 full days to 74 days, a difference of about a month. Some of the differences in the seasons were planned. But pools also lost open swimming days for mechanical issues, staff callouts or safety problems like storms and crime reported nearby — though officials say many of those closures lasted less than a full day.

In both years, swimmers had the least access to outdoor park pools in Ada, Bessemer, Chase, Oakdale, Union and Wrightwood parks. All those pools closed on Aug. 10. They span a variety of neighborhoods, and parks officials say they worked to ensure an even distribution of open days across the city.

“It’s a bummer,” said Kalle Larson, a dad who took his daughter swimming at Wrightwood’s pool, 2534 N. Greenview Ave., nearly a dozen times this summer. “I don’t know what costs are associated with it, but if it’s a staffing problem, can’t they hire someone else?”

In June, Chicago Park District CEO Carlos Ramirez-Rosa promised all 50 outdoor pools would be open seven days a week through Aug. 17, touting an expansion of pool availability unseen since 2020’s COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. He told the Sun-Times that depending on staffing, he hoped to be able to keep additional outdoor pools open longer, past the Aug. 18 start of classes at Chicago Public Schools.

Ramirez-Rosa has since changed course on the 11 outdoor swimming pools, announcing they’d close a week early.

In the end, 25 stayed open through Sunday while 14 have been given extended operating days through Labor Day. Another 27 indoor pools remain open for most of the year.

Parks spokeswoman Michele Lemons says a “drastic reduction” in the seasonal lifeguards who staff the pools — about 70% of whom are high school and college students — forced the park district to close pools early and redeploy its lifeguards.

Lemons, who would not make any officials available for an interview, pointed to a larger number of pools staying open until Labor Day this year — 14 outdoors this year, up from 11 last year. When considering which pools to keep open longer, officials leaned for the first time on a city tool known as a heat vulnerability index, a measure that identifies the hottest areas of the city where people are most vulnerable to getting sick or dying from extreme heat.

That led to keeping Avalon Park, along with two more indoor ones at Carver Park and Austin Town Hall, open through Labor Day, she said, so residents there would have more cooling options. 

Cooling is a critical role that pools and the parks play, Ramirez-Rosa has said, helping keep residents safe from the heat as summer temperatures surge.

It’s been a muggy, extremely warm and humid summer, too, according to Illinois State Climatologist Trent Ford.

The average temperature in Chicago through Tuesday has been just above 76 degrees, which is almost 3 degrees above normal and tied for fifth highest on record, Ford said.

The humidity has kept nighttime temperatures above average, Ford said.

“It has been a very hot summer so far,” Ford said.

Katie Hogan and her two kids learned the lousy news that Wrightwood Park’s pool, the center of their summer Saturday tradition, already was shut down for the season when they showed up to swim last weekend.

“We would love it if could stay open a couple of weekends longer,” Hogan said.

The staffing issues came as a surprise. “There always seemed to be a lot of lifeguards on duty, even on days where the parents had to stay in the pool with their kids,” she said. “But if they’re hiring teenagers then I get it.”

Contributing: Cindy Hernandez