Some of the 9,000 children attending summer camp with the District’s Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) crowned their days with a splash.
On a warm afternoon in Rosedale, city officials gathered at the edge of a new pool. Lines of children waited for the talking to end and the splashing to begin as a long-running neighborhood demand finally came into view.
The District reopened the Rosedale Outdoor Pool (1701 Gales St. NE) on July 23, after a $6.8 million replacement project intended to expand capacity at one of Ward 7’s heavily used summer facilities. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D), Ward 7 Councilmember Wendell Felder (D), Department of General Services (DGS) Director Delano Hunter and DPR Director Thennie Freeman joined campers, neighbors and Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners at 1701 Gales St. NE.
Bowser framed the reopening as part of a broader summer infrastructure and youth-programming push. She said in addition to the thousands of children attending a DPR camp this summer, city pools had drawn more than 230,000 visits as of July 15.
But at Rosedale, the event was about a local need, a need for a pool large enough to serve the neighborhood. DGS described the project as a full replacement of the outdoor pool to allow for greater capacity. The capacity question had been on residents’ minds well before the ribbon was cut. On summer mornings, a long line would form early along the sidewalk outside the pool. At a July 2024 DPR briefing, officials said the funds had been allocated because overcrowding was causing residents to be turned away and set their goal as expanding the pool as much as possible within the existing footprint.
At the opening, Bowser said it was “$6.8 million investment right here in Rosedale,” saying the city had expanded a pool she remembered from earlier work at the site. The adjacent spray park was not finished at the grand opening; she said DGS expected it to be ready in a few weeks.
When he took office about 24 months ago, Felder said, he had shared key Ward 7 priorities with Mayor Bowser. “Another promise that was made and another promise that was delivered,” Felder said, thanking DGS and DPR for the planning needed to complete the project.
He also credited the neighbors who pushed for the pool, naming former ANC 6A07 Commissioner Sondra Phillips-Gilbert, former ANC 7D06 Commissioner Marc Friend and current ANC 7D06 Commissioner Dominic A. Pacheco. Those advocates, Felder said, “never stopped speaking up” for the project.
Pacheco, who represents ANC 7D06 and serves as secretary of the commission, said the finished pool met the moment. “I think so. Yeah, I mean look at the excitement,” Pacheco said after the ceremony. “This is a central resource for our Rosedale community, even in the Kingman Park area, and so I think it meets those expectations.”
He was careful, however, to put the victory in its longer civic context. “Really, I have to give credit to Marc Friend, who is our previous commissioner, who really led the charge with community activists to get the funding for this,” Pacheco said. “Every summer, it’s packed, jam packed, and so we knew there was a need for a larger pool. And I tagged on alongside him at the end of it, but I’m happy with the outcome.”
The reopening also underscored what remains unfinished at the Rosedale campus. The pool shares the site with the Rosedale Recreation Center and the neighborhood library, both of which have been part of separate community conversations. In late 2024, residents were already pressing DC Public Library not to move the small Rosedale library from the campus, where it was built after grassroots organizing and opened in 2010.
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Officials made clear then that the pool money could not be used for the adjacent buildings. The nearly $7 million pool budget was restricted to the outdoor pool facility, even as residents asked for a coordinated vision for the library, recreation center and outdoor amenities.
Pacheco said that work continues. “There’s still a library to come that we’ve got to get funding for, continued funding,” he said. “We still have to focus on the rest of our rec center, facilities in the basketball court over here. We have other parts of the rec center that we have to focus on.” He also pointed to a playground being completed nearby. “The fight continues,” he said. “Always will.”
For one afternoon, though, the fight looked like a victory. After dignitaries cut the ribbon, there was a collective splash from a pool deck full of people who had waited through design meetings, construction schedules and summer crowding.
City officials call Rosedale Pool a new neighborhood investment, but neighbors got what they wanted. That’s something older and more elemental –a space finally big enough to have the community come make a splash together.
