By: Mike Koury | Southfield Sun | Published September 2, 2025
SOUTHFIELD — Southfield will take an important step in the development of a new pool and aquatic center this month.
The city of Southfield’s pool has been closed for over three years due to its aging infrastructure. In that time, Southfield has partnered with Oak Park for residents to use its pool during the summers.
“Our municipal swimming pool dates back to the early 1970s, and it got to the point where we just couldn’t fix it anymore,” Southfield Mayor Ken Siver said. “We had been Band-Aiding it for a number of years.”
Deputy City Administrator John Michrina said that the pool’s filtration system failed and it had infrastructure issues on its sides.
“There were a lot of expensive repairs that would have been included,” he said. “Also the way (the pool) was configured was very inefficient to operate because it required an unusual amount of lifeguards. And of course, being an outside pool, the usability in Michigan is not that great.”
“We’ve known for years and years that the pool was reaching the end of its life, and it just got to the point where it’d be more expensive to do a repair,” he continued.
Over the past year, Southfield has made efforts to build a new aquatic center. As part of this fiscal year’s budget, the city has set aside $22.5 million to construct a pool and center with whatever amenities a design can hold.
According to city officials, they received more than 20 proposals from architectural firms to make a design for the project. Those bids now have been whittled down to three, and a formal recommendation of a firm to design the pool will be presented to City Council at its Sept. 15 meeting, which will start at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 26000 Evergreen Road. The names of the finalists have yet to be released.
“This is an exciting process,” Michrina said. “It started with our elected and some of our appointed officials touring several different community pools and getting ideas about things they wanted. And these are what we’re going to be talking with our architect about to make sure that the things that are goals for our elected officials are included in our project.”
Depending on what the architect and the engineers determine, the pool will be located either at its current location, where the existing pool will be demolished, or nearby the ice arena.
Some of the items on the city’s wish list for the project, Siver said, include a lazy river and a children’s splash pad.
“Like with any project, you can give the architect a wish list, and then you may have to pare your wish list down depending on what the costs come in at,” he said. “I know it’d be super expensive, but this is going to be a year-round pool because it’s too much money to build a pool and then only use it for 10-12 weeks of the year. So consequently, it’d be great if it had a dome that retracted. I know that would be terribly expensive, but none of us know at this point what $22.5 million will buy.”