After months of tense meetings and surveys that left many neighbors cold, Five Points swimmers finally got the answer they wanted: Denver Parks & Recreation is keeping an Olympic-length pool at Mestizo-Curtis Park. The call reverses a plan that would have chopped the site into smaller leisure pools instead of preserving a full lap setup. Built in 1936 and closed since 2023, the long-shuttered pool has already cost neighborhood kids several summers without a walkable place to swim.
As reported by Denverite, the department will keep a 50-meter, Olympic-sized outdoor pool at Mestizo-Curtis Park, shelving the earlier idea to replace the long lap pool with multiple smaller basins. Advocates say the pivot only came after steady pressure from a coalition of Latino, Black, and longtime lap swimmers who flooded public meetings and petitioned the city to hang on to the larger pool.
How the reversal happened
Neighbors and longtime users told Rocky Mountain PBS they felt the city’s first round of outreach and online surveys leaned heavily toward white people and failed to capture the neighborhood’s real demographics. The initial design hit another wall in August, when the Landmark Preservation Commission rejected it over concerns about massing, safety, and how the project would treat the park’s existing murals. That pushback forced Parks & Rec to go back out for more feedback and surveys. Built in 1936, the pool was ultimately closed in 2023 because of leaks and aging infrastructure, neighbors say.
“Having a larger pool will allow all the kids from the neighborhood to swim,” Milo Martinez told Denverite. John Hayden, a local business owner and longtime swimmer, told the same outlet he and fellow lap swimmers started noticing a pattern: pools in majority-minority neighborhoods were being reduced or removed while other parks picked up bigger, fancier facilities.
Funding and timeline
The city’s project sheet pegs the Mestizo-Curtis rebuild at $12.5 million and lists the RISE Bond along with Parks & Rec capital and legacy funds as the money behind it, according to Denver Parks & Recreation. Another page from Denver Parks & Recreation lists an open house on Thursday, Jan. 15, from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Denver Language School Gilpin Campus, 2949 California St. The same materials sketch out a timeline that aims to start construction in spring 2026 and wrap up in summer 2027, with a clear caveat that the schedule is still just an estimate.
What comes next
Neighbors are still pressing for answers on what will happen to Emanuel Martinez’s “Eyes on the Park” mural and which kid-focused amenities will make the final cut, residents told Westword. Community advocates also continue to criticize survey results that skewed disproportionately white and argue that outreach skipped many Black and Latino households that have long relied on the pool, concerns documented by Rocky Mountain PBS.
Thursday night’s open house will be the first real test of how Parks & Rec plans to turn the community’s demand for an Olympic-length lap facility into a finished design. For now, swimmers say they are savoring a rare win for neighborhood advocates who pushed hard, pushed early, and, this time, actually got the city to change course.
