Neighborhood investments and connections
The recent announcement of plans for a new city swimming pool and aquatic facility at Kennedy Park brought to mind a letter published about four years ago in The Tribune.
The writer offered how driving past the bustling and bright Howard Park Center lifted her spirits — and how traveling west provided a sobering, frustrating contrast. The letter was a plea for greater investment in those neighborhoods.
Thanks to a $7.5 million grant, the city of South Bend plans just that sort of investment — beginning with a new city pool — in a historically underserved west-side neighborhood. The city will match the grant with $7.5 million, and the $15 million budgeted renovations include plans for a larger pool.
The early designs sound impressive, as described in a recent Tribune story, and include a new concession stand and bathhouse. In total, the 42,000square-foot facility would have capacity to host more than 500 people. In addition to the reimagined aquatic area, the city also envisions a new 10,000-squarefoot playground that's comparable to the 13,000square-foot facility at Howard Park. Other designs include a dog park, pickleball and basketball courts and a sustainable native habitat with walking paths.
In the Tribune story, Jordan Gathers, interim director of South Bend Venues, Parks and Arts, envisioned the project as having a transformative impact on an area of town that has experienced more than its share of economic and population losses. He noted that this project, by focusing on one area and connecting it to the city, speaks to that vision.
It's worth celebrating South Bend winning a National Park Service's Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partner grant, which aims to help lower-income communities where residents lack access to outdoor recreation.
And it's worth pointing out that locating this ambitious, “transformative” project in a neighborhood where two of five households earn less than $25,000 a year brings with it a responsibility to make sure it's accessible to everyone, especially those neighborhood residents. Location is a big part of accessibility, yes, but so is affordability.
Gathers says the Kennedy Park project is going to be “very inclusive for the community,” and he agreed that being affordable is part of being inclusive.
“We don't want anyone to feel that they're not invited or they're not able to indulge in all these great amenities that are going to be coming here in the near future.”
They haven't finalized prices for the Kennedy Park project, which is expected to be completed in late 2026. But Gathers says they're looking at their current fee structure to make sure it's affordable. In fact, changes to the water playground fees is one topic of discussion for Monday's meeting of South Bend's Board of Park Commissioners. “We do want to ensure that this new space — and even currently —that it's accessible and that it's inclusive of everyone.”
And what about that letter writer, Charlotte Pfeifer-Gillam, a longtime community activist who served on the South Bend Common Council? When she heard the news, Pfeifer-Gillam said she was “thrilled.”
“It made me feel like someone's paying attention to us.”