After Years of Disrepair, East Austin’s Historic Givens Pool Finds Its Future
https://austin.towers.net/after-year...ds-its-future/
The City of Austin’s historical neglect of park facilities east of I-35 compared with the central crown jewels of its system shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone familiar with the historical neglect of almost everything east of I-35, but what’s more obvious lately is the city’s own institutional awareness of that inequality, now cast in a harsher light than ever and not easily fixed by HR-friendly buzzwords like “equity” or “inclusion” since the issues at hand are often structural — not metaphorically, but in the literal sense of, say, a crumbling swimming pool leaking 120,000 gallons of water each day.
But the failing infrastructure that closed the pool of Givens District Park after more than 60 years of service to a historically Black community in East Austin is now set for a bond-funded renovation, and by all accounts the community engagement process informing the city’s vision plan for upgrades to the park and its pool was highly sensitive to the past and present of this neighborhood. We got a closer look at the new Givens District Park Aquatic Facility at a presentation to the Design Commission last week by representatives of the Parks and Recreation Department, Marmon Mok Architecture, and landscape architects Coleman & Associates, and the plan secured the commission’s unanimous recommendation — although commissioners mentioned that there ought to be a little more diversity in the renderings.
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