Overland Park won't rebuild neighborhood pools. Neighbors say 'slap in the face'

After more than two years of advocacy and effort, northern Overland Park neighbors won’t see their dreams of bringing back a beloved community pool come to fruition.

“My first thought is I have to go home and tell my kids we didn’t do it. We didn’t save the pool,” resident Rachel Shuck said. “I’m frustrated. I feel like we did all the things they asked us to do … And I feel like we were not listened to.”

Shuck was one of several residents who advocated for the city to rebuild Bluejacket Pool - a community pool on 103rd Street that closed down in 2024 - as part of the city’s 10-year parks and recreation master plan, Playbook OP. The draft outlined that the city would build two smaller community pools north of Interstate 435, with the Bluejacket site as a viable option.

But the Overland Park City Council ultimately steered away from this plan, voting 7-5 to approve an aquatics plan that focuses on maintaining its current, regional destination aquatics centers and outlines a future aquatics center in southern Overland Park. Councilmembers Melissa Cheatham, Drew Mitrisin, Amy Scrivner, Logan Heley and Richard Borlaza dissented.

Community pools will close

Instead of rebuilding community pools, the city’s recreation plan keeps Bluejacket as a park without a pool and will close Stonegate Pool - another neighborhood pool - when it reaches the end of its useful life in the next 10 years.

“Lots of money and time and energy has been spent by hundreds of people, and for them to go with a totally different option, I feel like it’s a huge slap in the face to all of those people that did all the work,” Shuck said.

The decision continues the city’s trajectory it started in 2013 to close community pools and move toward regional destination aquatic centers. City Council members who supported the new direction said it’s a more cost-effective way to complete the city’s goals and a way to serve larger amounts of people.

“Our job as elected officials is to balance what our community wishes and likes versus what we can deliver,” Mayor Curt Skoog said. “I think naming two pools that the expectations will be created that they will happen and I think based on the revenue we have today … I don’t think we’re able to deliver on that promise.”

Council members against the decision said the city’s plan doesn’t account for what residents wanted and had been pushing for and that a regional pool model won’t serve everyone’s needs.

“I’m really saddened by this outcome and I think that option goes fully against a two-and-a-half year process,” said Ward 2 Councilmember Drew Mitrisin, who represents the neighbors near Bluejacket. “For us at the 11th hour, on the aquatics piece, to throw that plan in the trash in favor of something we … have chosen as a more executable plan could not be more frustrating.”

Cost breakdown

City Manager Lori Curtis Luther said she recommended the option to continue moving toward regional aquatic centers because she thought it was the most feasible.

Playbook OP as it was originally presented shows an “extremely aggressive rate” of renovations and development - needing “$276 million more than typical funding levels” to implement all of the plan’s projects, according to city documents. Maintenance and development on the aquatics side of the plan were estimated to cost more than $94 million, not including operating costs.

“It would be the most expensive policy shift. If the council wants us to move in that direction, we will absolutely implement that,” Luther said. “But the reason it’s presented the way it is is because I think I have an obligation to look at financial and timing constraints that were not taken into consideration during the planning process.”

If the city council wanted to move forward with the plan as presented in its original draft - with the new neighborhood pools - officials would have to put a sales tax on the ballot or a property tax mill levy increase to generate additional income to keep up, Assistant City Manager Kate Gunja said.

‘Balancing the need’

Ward 6 Councilmember Christopher Newlin, who represents southern Overland Park, said that moving toward a regional model would attract more people to Overland Park’s facilities and could reach more residents across the city.

“I don’t want to pit us against each other, but I just think it’s the best model for the long range,” he said.

But Ward 3 Councilmember Amy Scrivner said she was concerned about losing smaller pool options for families that may be overwhelmed when going to larger, regional pools.

Greenlighting community pools didn’t mean the city wouldn’t build or maintain its regional pools, rather bring more options to the table, she said.

“It’s about balancing the need. I do see a need for community pools. I do see a need for continuing the regional model,” Scrivener said. “I don’t think it’s either or. … I think we need both and they can coexist.”

The Overland Park City Council will finalize Playbook OP in the fall, but dates haven’t been set yet.