PASCAGOULA, Miss. — The dream of bringing a public, floating, water-filtering pool to New York City just moved one step closer to reality. The team behind +POOL has reached a key construction milestone this week at Bollinger Shipyard in Mississippi, where the skeletal frame of its innovative barge has now been completed.

The barge will house the filtration system, swimming pool, and on-deck public amenities for what is expected to be the world’s first floating pool that actively filters river water, and will eventually be stationed at Pier 35 in Manhattan.

This latest phase follows last summer’s successful water filtration tests in the East River, which were carried out without the involvement of original designer Dong-Ping Wong. The team had also previously announced plans to bring +POOL installations to other New York cities, including Buffalo, Rochester, and Newburgh, demonstrating the scalable ambition of the project.

Now that structural assembly is finished, the next leg of the project involves dry towing the barge—using a larger ABS-certified transport vessel—from Pascagoula, Mississippi, through the Florida Bay, Biscayne Bay, and up the Atlantic Coast to New York Harbor. That voyage is expected to take approximately three weeks, with relocation scheduled for late June.

Once in New York, the 2,000-square-foot barge will undergo further retrofitting to transform it into a fully functioning, health agency-approved floating pool, according to the organization.

“We are currently designing the below deck and above deck components of our first facility for health agency review,” said Kara Meyer, managing director of Friends of +POOL, in a statement.
“Thanks to the incredible support of our city and state partners, we are advancing this innovation so that New Yorkers can have safe ways to reconnect to their natural environment.”

The final installation at Pier 35 is slated for May 2026, at which point full-scale water filtration testing and regulatory evaluation will begin. Once it passes that review, +POOL will open to the public for swimming—marking a new chapter in how cities interact with natural waterways.

The +POOL team emphasized that weekly water quality monitoring is already underway in collaboration with the Interstate Environmental Commission, ensuring long-term compliance and data collection.

“The world’s first water-filtering floating swimming pool,” +POOL said in a statement, will only open “once health agencies have approved the final design of the facility.”

In addition to its environmental mission, +POOL’s development brings the promise of economic and community benefits. Friends of +POOL board chair George Fontas highlighted the broader impact:

“Our committee remains committed to bringing river swimming back to New York City and advancing job creation through its annual operations—filtration system maintenance, lifeguards.”

Renderings of the final design are expected by the end of 2025, once all agency approvals are secured. Until then, the +POOL team continues to coordinate with state and city officials, engineers, and environmental scientists to deliver what could become one of New York’s most iconic and innovative public spaces.

With this milestone behind them, the +POOL team is forging ahead—riding the current of both technological innovation and civic imagination.

Originally reported by Daniel Jonas Roche in The Architect's Newspaper.