The Clairemont Pool, located at 3600 Clairemont Drive at the South Clairemont Park and Recreation Center, has now been closed long enough that residents have heard several projected reopening dates come and go. That has raised plenty of questions among concerned community members. Explore Clairemont covered the closure last month, but got further details this week.
Nicole McNeil, Assistant Deputy Director for the City of San Diego Parks and Recreation Department’s Aquatics District, sat down with Explore Clairemont to address questions directly from Clairemont residents about the extended closure of the Clairemont Pool, including when it will reopen, why it’s taking so long, and how much it cost.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited to remove filler words, repeated phrases, and false starts.
Explore Clairemont: One of the biggest frustrations we’ve heard from the community has been communication. People visit the City website and see that the pool is closed, but there haven’t been regular updates when timelines change. Is the City going to improve that?
Nicole: This is really good feedback, actually. We have our voicemail and a phone number, and we return messages on a daily basis here at the pool. Additionally, we’ve been getting out to a lot of meetings, like the Clairemont Town Council, and we’ll be at the community recreation meeting on September 16th.
We plan on being at Clairemont Family Day. We’re going to work even harder to be as present as possible and available for the community so that we can answer questions and provide updates. And that’s really good feedback as far as the website. I think we can start working on providing more updates. That’s a great space.
Explore Clairemont: The problem is that relatively few residents attend those community meetings. What do you want the larger Clairemont community to know about where the project stands right now?
Nicole: That’s why I really appreciate you being here to help make sure the truth gets told to the community. That’s why we wanted to have this event, so that we can really share the news with the community and make sure the community knows that there have been so many significant upgrades already here at this pool. The project has been moving. Unfortunately, we did have a little pause in May, which we can talk about. But this project has been fast-tracked in many ways.
The pool deck is about 90% complete. We have a clear path to completion, and I’m feeling confident we may have only about six or seven more months until we can finally get this pool up and running for the community.
Explore Clairemont: What happened in May?
Nicole: We had steady work from the year before all the way until May 2026. Unfortunately, at that point, the fencing cost did increase, and we did not have enough of what we call contract capacity.
We used a citywide maintenance contract to expedite the fencing project. Although there were funds, because this is grant-funded and we had $3 million identified for this project, with other funding as well, without the contract capacity, it required additional procurement processes on our end, which we’ve worked through.
Explore Clairemont: Was the fencing factored in on the original project?
Nicole: Yeah. The plan was to use the citywide fence contractor, and that was a way to actually make this project much faster, as opposed to doing what’s called a capital improvement project, where it would go out to bid and could involve design and construction that also costs a lot more.
So this was a way of doing it cheaper and faster. It’s just unfortunate that it was a citywide contract and it ran out of capacity. So what that did require was an increase in capacity, and that effort was led by our purchasing department. It required a Council action that happened in July. All went well there. The capacity has increased, and we’re back in business.
Editor’s Note: The San Diego City Council adopted a resolution in July 2026 to amend the citywide contract with All Around Fencing to increase the not-to-exceed limit from $3 million in 2024 to $8.9 million in 2026. This amount covers citywide temporary fencing needs and not just the Clairemont Pool.
Explore Clairemont: Was the pool contractor also part of an existing citywide contract, or did it go out to bid?
That contractor was selected before the project had even started, so there was no delay on that end. In fact, that contractor has been absolutely wonderful—very responsive and professional—and has helped coordinate with the other contractors to really keep this project moving.
Nicole: We had an existing contract for the pool. That’s our maintenance contractor, California Commercial Pools. That went out to bid years ago, but that was for a citywide maintenance contract, and not specific to Clairemont Pool.
Explore Clairemont: Some residents have said the project has felt disjointed. Is there a project manager coordinating all of these different pieces?
Nicole: That’s unfortunate because there’s a lot of effort going into keeping this project on track. It’s definitely a big focus of mine. I have a staff member who’s dedicated to this project as well, and then we have staff members from multiple departments who are also dedicated specifically to the Clairemont Pool project, so it is very much a team effort.
Do you own or help run a small business in town?
What’s unique about this site is that it is a large project, and many of the components do need to be sequenced. Unfortunately, with the hurdle of the fence, because we were on pause for the fence, the rest of the work was also on pause.
Explore Clairemont: Why did the fencing delay affect work on the rest of the pool?
Nicole: The reason for that is because once we plaster the pool, we immediately have to put water in it. And once there’s water, we can’t leave an exposed body of water. We need to make sure that it’s safe for the community.
So we’re doing things in the proper steps so that we can reopen the pool safely. And once it’s open, we expect it’s going to serve the community for many, many years to come.
Explore Clairemont: Will the high dive return?
Nicole: The high dive will not return. It’s too much of a liability on our end. But we can look at the low dive. I think there is interest in the community on that end. So that’s the plan at this point, but we’ve removed our high dives at all city pools.
Explore Clairemont: What programs do you expect to offer when the pool reopens? Will there be swim lessons, water fitness, swim teams, and water polo?
Nicole: We 100% want to offer as many community programs as possible. We will have swimming lessons, most definitely, for all ages. We plan on hosting our recreational-level teams for swim team and water polo. We plan on having adult water fitness, which is extremely popular as well.
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And then this pool also serves San Diego Unified School District, so immediately upon reopening, we’ll be able to invite back Clairemont High School. We’re super excited about that. Marston will be returning as well for their swimming lessons.
Explore Clairemont: What about Masters swimming specifically?
Nicole: I do have a volunteer in mind that I can ask. He used to be a pool manager actually at this site, and if he’s interested in starting a program, I would love to start a Masters program here. We would just have to identify the staff first.
Explore Clairemont: Clairemont High’s aquatics teams have had to use the Standley pool in University City during the closure. With some City pool hours being reduced because of budget cuts, are the Standley hours being affected too?
Nicole: Standley pool hours actually were not touched. Because that is a joint-use pool, it’s not impacted by the budget, and it serves multiple high schools.
Explore Clairemont: Residents have also asked about additional seating and shade structures. Is that part of the project?
Nicole: It is absolutely taken into consideration. I think our priority right now is just reopening the facility, and then we can evaluate if there are additional funds to have additional stages of this project that can happen at a later date.
Explore Clairemont: What about the interior — lockers, showers and locker room upgrades?
Nicole: We plan on installing new lockers, and then we will need to evaluate available funding to see if we can do some additional upgrades as well. But our plan is to reopen the pool once our critical-path items are completed. We want to get the pool open as soon as possible and potentially do some upgrades in the future when the pool is already open.
Explore Clairemont: Another big question we hear is: Why is this costing so much money?
Nicole: It’s not costing so much money. This project is low-cost, considering we’re doing maintenance project contracts. Many times, pools cost upwards of $20 million to $30 million, and we’ll have a brand-new facility at $3 million, which was the budget that we had to work with.
Explore Clairemont: A recent schedule showed fencing work beginning in August. Where does the fence contract stand now?
Nicole: The purchasing path has been approved, and so we are in communication with our fence contractor now to hopefully restart work in the next couple of weeks.
Explore Clairemont: We’ve also heard concerns that County permits could add several months after construction is finished. Is the County holding up the project?
Nicole: That permitting process actually happens concurrently during the project, so the County is not holding up any work. The County has approved the enclosure for the new fence, and we’re able to initiate work. The final County permit won’t be provided to us until after the project is complete.
So, like I say, it’s not holding up any work currently. It’s just an ongoing process that the contractors have with the County. It’s interactive, and they work through every step of the way.
Explore Clairemont: Residents have asked whether the City could publish three-week look-ahead schedules so people can see what work is coming up. Is that something the City can do?
Nicole: We want to do our best to make that available to the public. We’re going to take back that feedback and start working on a landing page. We hope we can get that up.
In the meantime, the public is more than welcome to call us. We’re available, and we’re going to be providing ongoing updates at community meetings until the project is complete and we’re reopened to the community.
Explore Clairemont: What would you most like Clairemont residents to know about the project?
Nicole: This has obviously been a big project, very complex, with multiple pieces that have had to be sequenced, and the timeline has just evolved. We want to do our best to be as communicative and transparent as possible. And I just really appreciate that people want to be involved in the process.
Clairemont is such a special community. This pool was really born from community advocates, and it’s exciting to be able to open up what will be a brand-new pool for this community, which we know will serve them for many, many years to come.
