Michael Brown, a community advocate and longtime resident of the North Portland area, grew up swimming at the Columbia Indoor Pool in the Columbia Park & Annex. Later, his daughters and grandchildren would learn to swim there.
However, in the last three years, residents like Brown haven’t been able to access the Columbia Indoor Pool. Since its permanent closure in 2022, roughly 45,000 North Portlanders have lost access to a pool near them, leaving residents of St. Johns, Portsmouth, University Park, Kenton and Arbor Lodge neighborhoods with few options.
“It was a year-round tool, and it was a short distance away, and we could use it,” Brown said. “I was in disbelief when they … announced to permanently close the year-round indoor pool, while other areas like Southwest (Portland) and so forth, had access to the pool.”
Plans to demolish the Columbia Indoor Pool are scheduled to proceed in the spring. Now, community members are advocating against the demolition and to preserve the Columbia Indoor Pool, a fight that has been ongoing for the last six years.
How did we get here?
In 2019, Portland Parks & Recreation, or PP&R, requested a budget from the Portland City Council that included a $6.3 million budget gap between projected revenues and expenses. To make up for a budget shortfall due to bureau expenditures outpacing actual revenues for the past several years, community centers, park projects and pools — including Columbia Indoor Pool — were on the chopping block.
According to PP&R, the nearly 100-year-old pool posed significant safety hazards and needed significant maintenance repairs to continue operating. Operating at about $770,000 annually while only generating about $320,000 in revenue, the city claimed it wasn’t worth fixing given its estimated repair costs between $5-10 million.
The city announced it would close the Columbia Indoor Pool in 2020. It would operate for one more year before the city announced its permanent closure due to public safety concerns.
What community members are seeking now
Friends of Columbia Park, or FCP, a nonprofit that helps maintain Columbia Park, have advocated for the pool to remain open since 2019. Chris Manno, FCP president, has seen firsthand how the pool’s loss has impacted the North Portland community.
“It’s really been kind of a morale killer,” Manno said. “Losing this really cherished community resource that’s been there for nearly 100 years, people expect it to keep going. People keep paying their taxes, and you expect the city will take care of you. But when it doesn’t, people get understandably upset and demoralized.”
Manno says FCP is requesting that the city delay the demolition before making an irreversible decision. Brown is also asking for a delay.
“There’s no opposition to getting things going and reopening them,” Brown said. “Once those pools are demolished, they’re demolished.”
The closest indoor pool in the North Portland area is the Matt Dishman Indoor Pool. With the Columbia Indoor Pool closed, it’s now the only indoor pool serving North Portland.
Manno and Brown say North Portland residents have struggled to get swim lessons and are concerned about how overcrowded the pools will be now that one is gone.
PP&R has identified North Portland residents as having low access to indoor aquatic facilities and pool resources, as Manno and Brown describe. This led the city to plan to build the North Portland Aquatic Center, which is set to open in 2030.
However, Manno doesn’t see the center as a replacement. He says both are and will be crucial community resources.
Elaine Premo spent most of her life in the North Portland community, enjoying Columbia Park and the pool. She has also been advocating for a demolition delay but feels discouraged by PP&R’s direction in investing in the new aquatic center without reconsidering renovations and repairs.
“I still walk at the park and have been heartbroken at the lack of repair done to the pool,” Premo said. “I was appalled to hear the pool is being considered for demolition.”
Former Commissioner Dan Ryan — who now represents North Portland in City Council — previously oversaw PP&R when $59.8 million in Park System Development Charges, or SDCs, were used to accelerate the construction of the North Portland Aquatic Center in 2023.
The center secured $91.5 million out of an estimated $102 million needed to construct it.
‘It’s discrimination against North Portland’
For Brown, the investment in the new aquatic center left him in disbelief after advocates had been rallying for years to keep the pool open.
“People just kind of accept what the city’s telling them, and I question the city,” Brown said. “Pools belong to us, but I cannot explain or attempt to even justify why they didn’t use that money for (Columbia Indoor Pool). They seem to have money for their pet projects, but they ignore North Portland. Once those pools are demolished, oh my gosh, we may never get anything.”
Brown believes North Portland has long been neglected because of its demographics. For example, the Portsmouth neighborhood, where the Columbia Indoor Pool is located, has the highest number of families living below the federal poverty line in the city of Portland. It is also one of the most racially and ethnically diverse.
Yet, these individuals might be the most impacted by the pool’s permanent closure.
Lower-income households may face more significant challenges in accessing swimming lessons, and the risk of drowning may increase depending on race. Studies show young Black men are especially at risk of drowning, and Indigenous people were more likely than white people to die from drowning.
Brown believes the inaction from the city to preserve community resources in North Portland reflects a discriminatory attitude embedded in Portland’s history, mirroring that of the forced displacement of Black residents in the Albina neighborhood.
He points to how other neighborhood pools in other more affluent parts of the city have had repairs and maintenance done through PP&R, including funding from the 2014 Parks Replacement Bond, which identified Columbia Indoor Pool as a pool that needed repairs and improvements to prevent closures.
“As far as diversification extends west of I-5, the diversity is there,” Brown said. “It should have never been even open for discussion. Young people, all of us, need this pool.”
What’s next?
While the future of the Columbia Indoor Pool remains uncertain, Manno, Brown and Premo believe that the changes in the City Council could help them reach a solution. Now that three city councilors represent North Portland geographically, they are more optimistic that they may have someone advocating for them.
District 2 city councilors Sameer Kanal, Elana Pirtle-Guiney and Ryan did not respond to Street Roots’ inquiry about what action they were taking to address community members’ concerns or how they would ensure North Portlanders would continue to have pool access.
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This article appears in February 12, 2025.