Asheville families face another summer with one public pool open

Asheville families will head into summer with just one city-owned pool open, a shortage that keeps the city’s aquatic access tightly constrained nearly two years after Helene. The only public pool available this season is at the Dr. Wesley Grant Sr. Southside Community Center, where admission is set at $3 per person per day and the pool is scheduled to stay open until early September.

The other city pools remain out of service for very different reasons, but the effect is the same for residents looking for low-cost heat relief. Recreation Park’s pool suffered catastrophic Helene-related damage in September 2024, and the city has said the site will move through public concept work this summer before construction begins in 2027. The Malvern Hills pool, meanwhile, has been closed for several seasons and is expected to stay shut for a third straight summer.

That leaves Asheville with a sharply reduced public swimming system just as warm-weather demand rises. In 2025, the Grant Southside pool hosted 10,735 swimmers, a number city officials have used to show how much pressure falls on a single facility when the rest of the system is unavailable. Asheville Parks & Recreation has also said it is seeking partnerships to provide pool access in other parts of the city, an acknowledgment that the current setup leaves large parts of town without an easy municipal option.

For families who cannot count on a neighborhood pool, the city points to Splasheville in Pack Square Park as the only public splash pad in Asheville. It opens in early May and gives parents another low-cost place for children to cool off, but it is not a full substitute for a swimming pool. Separate Buncombe County pools remain another option outside city control, yet Asheville’s own public system is still centered on one pool in Southside and one splash pad downtown.

The long-term city plan is to rebuild, not simply repair. Asheville says its Helene recovery work and broader parks planning are intended to create a more resilient and equitable parks system, and the Azalea Parks and Infrastructure Recovery project includes storm-damaged recreation assets along Azalea Road. Malvern Hills Park’s replacement pool is being designed as a modern, code-compliant and accessible facility, and residents reviewed that plan at an open house in West Asheville on Sept. 23, 2025. Until those projects are built, Asheville enters another summer with a public swimming system that remains far smaller than the one storm damage took away.