The conversation Waco keeps not having about public pools

Why doesn't Waco have a public pool?

Some people assume Hawaiian Falls counts. It doesn't, not by the definition that actually matters: a place owned by the city, kept open with tax dollars, where a family can show up on a Tuesday in July for a few dollars. No membership. No $30 admission.

By that definition, Waco had zero public pools for years. Thankfully, we just got one back.

Here's what most people miss about Waco's pool history

Lions Park was established in 1952 by the Waco Lions Club as a recreation destination for the youth of Waco. William L. Baine designed the layout, supervised construction, and shaped the landscaping. Over five years and roughly $255,000, it grew into what was described as one of the most beautiful areas in the city: a grandstand, bleachers, a baseball diamond, putt-putt golf. And a swimming pool that, on opening day, was claimed to be the largest outdoor tiled swimming pool in the United States.

The pool was L-shaped, 165 feet long and 75 feet wide, meeting Olympic and intercollegiate standards. It held half a million gallons of water, refiltered every six hours, with overhead lighting for night swimming and a separate wading pool for young children. By 1965, Kiddie Land had joined the park with go-karts, a large slide, and a train. In 1972, a Superslide was moved in from the corner of Waco Drive and Valley Mills Drive.

Lions Park became the kind of place people built summers around. The kind of place people still talk about when they talk about growing up here.

But Lions Pool wasn't even the beginning of Waco's relationship with public swimming.

That goes back to the 1890s, when local businessmen started building natatoriums on top of the city's artesian wells. Tom Padgitt built the first indoor pool in Waco around 1891 at Padgitt Park, Fifteenth and Clay: a 35 by 75 foot pool, open daily from 6am to 10pm, with separate wings for men and women.

The following year, Joel Robinson opened the Colored People's Natatorium on South First Street, built for $5,000. It was, at the time, the only such natatorium for African Americans in Texas. It burned on March 28, 1894, eight days after the Natatorium Hotel fire nearby. There is no record it was ever rebuilt.

That same year, R.B. Parrott completed the Natatorium Hotel at Fourth and Mary: four stories, a rooftop garden, one of the largest indoor swimming pools in the South, with wells drilled 1,850 feet deep. It burned in 1894, was rebuilt larger, ran for decades, and finally closed in December 1926 when Waco's artesian water supply ran dry from population growth. It burned again in early 1927, sitting empty, and was never rebuilt a third time.

By the 1910s through the 1940s, the city had pools scattered across it. The Kiwanis Pool at Fourth and Tennessee, nicknamed "The Beach" because the city hauled in loads of sand for sunbathing. The MacArthur Swimming Pool near Twenty-Ninth and Alexander, where kids rode 100-pound blocks of ice around the pool as they melted, and admission was 25 cents for children and 50 cents for adults. The Bledsoe-Miller Pool in East Waco, built in 1949, popular with children in the East Waco neighborhood into at least 1980. The Sun Pool at the Texas Cotton Palace site, opened June 10, 1950, where two teenage boys, Stan Skyles and Billy Betros, were killed when the 1953 tornado destroyed the dressing rooms. The pool was repaired and reopened that August.

For most of the 20th century, Waco had pools in multiple parts of the city. That was just normal.

Then came the quiet closures

The Kiwanis Pool was drained and closed for good in September 1977. The Sun Pool's last documented reference is 1979; the city filled it in and converted it to a playing field and parking in 1984. At the end of the 1997 season, Lions Pool closed. In April 1998, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported the decision: it would not reopen due to health and safety concerns. In June 1999, it became a bumper-boat rink. By 2001, that too was gone. The basin was eventually removed. Today that spot at Lions Park is open greenspace.

The city exited the pool business without much public debate. Officials cited costs, declining usage, and the argument that pools were "out of vogue." Splash pads were cheaper and lower maintenance.

Here's the part worth sitting with: during that same stretch, Waco contributed roughly $2.5 million in public funds toward building Hawaiian Falls, the commercial water park that now sits on a former city pool site. So it wasn't that we stopped spending public money on water recreation. We redirected it toward a place you can't reach without a car and can't enter for less than $30.

There's also a piece of history that doesn't get mentioned enough. In 1964, the Waco Community Relations Committee succeeded in desegregating all city park and recreation facilities, except swimming pools. The pools were carved out. That history sits underneath this conversation whether we acknowledge it or not.

We decided this without really deciding it.

We just got one back. Sort of.

In late January 2025, Waco reopened the Doris Miller Community Pool in East Waco after nearly $900,000 in renovations. Indoor, open year-round. Lap swim, open swim, aquatic fitness, swim lessons, lifeguard certifications.

That's great.

But it's one pool. One indoor pool for a city and county of roughly 270,000 people.

So what does Waco actually have right now?

Beyond Doris Miller: city splash pads (free, seasonal, no deep water), Hawaiian Falls (seasonal, costs money, no bus route), Lake Waco access, and the Greater Waco YMCA.

The YMCA is carrying most of the weight. They run a junior Olympic 10-lane indoor lap pool, an outdoor recreation pool, and a therapy pool. It's the main hub for lessons, lap swimming, and competitive swimming in Waco.

The problem is it's a membership-based nonprofit.

During Midway ISD practices, seven of the ten lanes go to student athletes. Three remain for everyone else. Hosting a large meet means 200 to 250 swimmers crowding the deck. Local competitive swimmers don't have regular access to a 50-meter long-course pool, putting them behind peers from cities that do.

A 2016 Act Locally Waco article asked the same question this piece is asking. The comments still sit there, years later. One woman wrote that she spent two days looking for a place to swim and couldn't find one outside an overcrowded Y. A couple who had just moved to Waco said they just wanted a lane. Someone pointed to Temple's Lions Junction city pool as a model and asked why Waco couldn't do the same. That article is nearly a decade old. The comments still read as current.

Pools are really, really expensive

This is the part pool advocates don't always lead with.

In 2025, the Greater Waco Sports Commission paid $40,000 for a feasibility study from Counsilman-Hunsaker, a national aquatic consulting firm. Could Waco support a regional swim center?

Yes, with a significant price tag.

The consultants laid out three scenarios, all built around a 50-meter Olympic pool:

Annual operating costs: $2.4 to $2.6 million, with user fees potentially covering 65 to 75 percent of that. Projected economic impact from meets and visitor spending: $8.6 million per year.

That last number matters. A regional aquatic center isn't just a place to swim. It pulls weekend competitions that fill Waco hotels.

The math is brutal. It's also not the whole story.

Other mid-sized cities have done this. Newberg, Oregon built a full aquatic center after voters passed a $19.9 million bond in 2014. Great Falls, Montana landed an $18.3 million construction contract partly through a $10 million federal grant. Woodburn, Oregon combined a $15 million state lottery bond with $5 million in parks funds for a $20 million upgrade, after voters rejected a larger $40 million version first.

The pattern is the same everywhere: bonds, grants, hotel tax revenue, naming rights, school district partnerships. No single source covers it. You stack what you can find.

The Counsilman-Hunsaker study notes that successful facilities usually involve multiple public and nonprofit partners. For Waco, the study mentions the possibility of a local district as a site and operating partner. Waco ISD has said it's not planning to participate. Midway ISD hasn't engaged yet.

And then there's Lions Park

Right now, where Lions Pool once stood at New Road and Bosque, there's open greenspace. The basin is gone. The Superslide is gone. Kiddie Land is gone.

The city is actively investing in parks right now. Alice Martinez Rodriguez Park and China Spring Park are both in development, and that investment is worth celebrating.

But Lions Park sits there, and Waco residents have noticed. Comments about what should go into that space come up consistently, and a pool is part of that conversation regularly. The land is there. The history is there. The demand is clearly there.

So do we actually want this badly enough?

The most telling detail isn't that Waco voters have rejected a pool measure. It's that they haven't been given one to vote on. The city has largely made these decisions through inaction and quiet decommissioning, without a direct public question about pools in at least a generation.

We have a feasibility study. We have a renovated Doris Miller proving reinvestment is possible. We have coaches and parents describing a real gap. We have Lions Park sitting open. We have hotel tax dollars that could be tied to meet revenue.

What we don't have is a specific proposal. No bond. No site locked in. No committed partners. No ballot question.

That's the distance between a study and a pool.

Wanting a pool is easy. Plenty of cities want a pool. The cities that actually built one organized around it, brought it to a vote, and did the unglamorous work of building a funding plan that could survive contact with a city budget.

Waco can do that. The history is here. The demand is here. The land at Lions Park is sitting there among many available sites.

The question is whether enough people want it badly enough to go to bat for it, not just nod along when someone else brings it up.

If that's you, leave a comment below. Would you vote yes on a pool bond? Would you want to see something go back into Lions Park specifically? And if you'd be willing to help organize around this, say so. That's where it starts.