Don’t Take the Plunge Without a Site

Just this past summer, the county Parks and Recreation Department started charging a dollar for kids to use county pools. The community rightly was outraged that needy children were getting priced out of swimming, and the county and responsible business interests worked quickly to ensure that county pool admission would remain free. Now there’s another issue about pools and needy kids, and a solution again will depend on public and private interests working cooperatively.

This time the pool in question is the 1932 Olympic swimming stadium in Exposition Park. It has served as the largest public swim facility in the city of Los Angeles. On summer days, as many as 1,400 recreational swimmers--mostly kids--swam and splashed in the shadows of the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. And 250 more youngsters were involved in competitive swim programs there.

However, because of serious quake damage to the natatorium, officials are considering razing the entire facility, pool and all, to make way for a parking structure for Raider and Clipper fans.

But before they pave over this community’s recreation paradise and put up a parking lot, the city and Coliseum commissioners must guarantee that children living in the neighborhoods near Vermont Avenue and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard have a place to swim. And it should be somewhere near the old site.

Why the insistence? When the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics Organizing Committee got a funding commitment to build a $4-million swim stadium on the nearby campus of the University of Southern California, officials promised that the pool would be open to the surrounding community. That didn’t happen as planned because, among other reasons, the pool lacked a “shallow end.” Fortunately the city was able to turn to an old standby: the 1932 Olympic pool.

Now, with the threat of demolition looming there are no clear alternatives for a new site.

That’s why groups like the Amateur Athletic Foundation, which is entrusted with distributing proceeds from the 1984 summer games to Southern California youth, rightly are resisting any sudden move to tear down the old pool until officials can guarantee completion of a new one in the Exposition Park area.

City officials say they can fund a new pool with $7 million from a 1992 bond issue and additional money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Good. But they should also remember that the community deserves a comparable pool in a comparable location.