COMING SOON: KIDD SPRINGS PARK AQUATICS CENTER

KIDD SPRINGS PARK opened 124 years ago as a private park, and it’s been the location of a neighborhood pool since the 1950s.

For years, it served the community with the basics — a place to cool off in the heat of the summer for just a few bucks and a home for the swim team, the Kidd Springs Sailfish. But after the City of Dallas sold parkland it owned at Lake Ray Hubbard for $31 million in 2016, it is a new day for public pools in Dallas.

The city budgeted $4.5 million for a snazzy new aquatics center.

Aquatics coordinator Raul Robles says the pools, bathhouse and office are on track to open June 1.

HERE’S WHAT WE ARE GETTING:

• Six-lane lap pool and “plunge pool” with a diving board and climbing wall

• 20-foot slide tower with two body slides

• Children’s pool with beach entry and play structures

• Shade pavilion, tables with umbrellas and lounge chairs

• 3,000-square-foot locker rooms with showers, toilets and changing areas

• Break room for employees

• Concession stand

Admission to the new Kidd Springs Park aquatics center costs $4 for kids 11 and younger and $6 for anyone 12 or older. Season passes to “community pools,” which include Kidd Springs, Martin Weiss, Tietze Park and about a dozen others, cost $50. A $70 pass for “the cove” membership will gain entry to all of those pools plus the water park at Samuell Grand and almost every Dallas public pool or water park except for Bahama Beach.

—RACHEL STONE

By SCOTT SHIRLEY