Walk the loop from the Los Feliz Boulevard entrance down past the old pool and out toward the Sunnynook bridge on any weekend this fall and you'll pass three separate city projects in about fifteen minutes. None of them share a timeline. Only one of them has an actual construction date.
That's the thing worth sorting out if you live here. The chain-link fence around the Griffith Park Pool has been part of the scenery since 2020, long enough that it's easy to file it under "someday." But someday just became September 2026. Meanwhile, a much bigger planning process covering the same stretch of park just launched its first public survey, with no construction date attached to it at all. And a third project, entirely separate from both, has already been rewiring the roads a few hundred yards away since spring. Treating these as one slow-moving city process instead of three independent ones is the mistake that leaves people surprised by fencing, detours, or a reopening date that keeps sliding.
The Pool Has a Start Date
The Griffith Park Pool, at the corner of Riverside Drive and Los Feliz Boulevard, opened in 1927 as the Municipal Plunge and shut down in 2020 under pandemic closures. When the city tried to refill it once restrictions lifted, workers found the basin no longer held water. It has sat empty behind a chain-link fence ever since.
That changes this month. Construction on a full rebuild is expected to begin in September 2026, according to city reporting from earlier this year, with the existing tank demolished and replaced by a 50-meter competition pool, a separate recreational pool with a splash pad, and a restored two-story Spanish Colonial Revival pool house with modernized, accessible changing rooms.
The number worth watching isn't the reopening date. It's what happened to the budget between two rounds of reporting in the same year. An earlier estimate pegged the project at $28 million with a spring 2028 finish. By the time officials detailed the plan again this spring, the figure had grown to $40 million, with completion pushed to around mid-2029. That's not unusual for California public works, where CEQA review, historic preservation requirements, and prevailing-wage rules routinely widen both the budget and the calendar between an early estimate and a funded one. If you're planning around a 2028 reopening, plan around 2029 instead.
The firm doing the design carries some credibility here. Perkins Eastman, working under its earlier name Pfeiffer Partners, led the renovation of Griffith Observatory completed in 2006, a project widely regarded as one of the more successful public restorations in the city. Planners have also flagged the Los Feliz Nursery School, which sits close to the pool site, as a specific concern raised at a public meeting, and staff say they're working through construction staging to limit disruption to the school day.
Until the new pool opens, the nearest city-run alternatives for Los Feliz residents are in Echo Park, Hollywood, and Glassell Park.
Everything Else Around It Is Still at the Survey Stage
Here's where the confusion usually starts. The pool sits inside a larger, 8.9-acre zone at the park's southern edge that the city calls the South Griffith Park Master Plan, and that plan is a completely different animal. It has no construction date, no finalized design, and no confirmed budget. What it has, as of this summer, is a project website, a community listening survey, and a first workshop.
The master plan's scope is bigger than the pool alone. It covers Friendship Auditorium, the Griffith Park Adult Center, the tennis courts, a synthetic turf soccer field, a children's playground, Sunnynook River Park and its two bicycle bridges, and an adjacent Department of Water and Power parcel holding the William Mulholland Memorial Fountain and Centennial Gardens. Improving pedestrian safety across Riverside Drive and strengthening the connection to the L.A. River bike path are explicitly part of the brief, along with settling where a permanent Adult Center should eventually sit.
The city hired Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates to lead the design work, the same firm currently developing a parallel master plan for Elysian Park a few miles south. Two of the city's larger, more used parks are effectively being redesigned by the same team at the same time, which is one reason the South Griffith Park process reads more like a listening tour right now than a construction announcement. A community survey launched in late June, and the first virtual workshop was held on July 15. If you missed it, the survey and project updates are still posted on the city's South Griffith Park Master Plan page.
| Griffith Park Pool | South Griffith Park Master Plan | |
|---|---|---|
| Status | Funded, construction starting | Community input phase, no design finalized |
| Scope | Pool, pool house, deck | 8.9 acres: auditorium, adult center, sports fields, Sunnynook, DWP fountain parcel |
| Design team | Perkins Eastman | Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates |
| Timeline | Construction begins Sept. 2026, targeting reopening around 2029 | No construction date set |
| How to weigh in | [email protected] | Project survey and workshops via city site |
The Third Clock Nobody Groups With These Two
A short walk uphill, Crystal Springs Drive has already been narrowed from two travel lanes in each direction to one, with a new protected bike lane running alongside. That work, part of what the city calls the Griffith Park Safety and Active Transportation Improvements Project, started construction in March 2026 and is a separate funded effort from either of the projects above.
It exists because of a specific loss. In April 2022, 77-year-old cyclist Andrew Jelmert was struck and killed by a speeding driver on Crystal Springs Drive. The advocacy that followed, led by the group Streets Are For Everyone alongside Friends of Griffith Park and others, pushed the city to secure four million dollars in state funding and eventually break ground on the road diet that's now visible on the pavement. If you've noticed the new bollards and single travel lanes on your last drive through the park, that's this project, not the pool and not the master plan.
What This Actually Changes About Your Next Few Years Here
If you swim, you're looking at roughly three more years without a pool at this end of the park, not the two you might have assumed from earlier reporting, and the nearest options in the meantime are in Echo Park, Hollywood, and Glassell Park.
If you walk or bike through the Sunnynook bridge corridor to reach the L.A. River path, that stretch is inside the master plan's scope for future pedestrian and connectivity improvements, but nothing there is scheduled yet. The Baum bicycle bridge, built in 2002, and the Sunnynook bridge beside it stay as they are until that broader plan produces an actual design.
If you drive or ride through on Crystal Springs, the lane changes you've already seen are close to finished and represent the one piece of this trio that's furthest along.
The practical read: expect fencing and truck traffic near the pool site starting this month, expect the broader corner of the park to look the same for a while longer even as the planning process moves forward in the background, and expect the road changes on Crystal Springs to be the version of "already happened" among the three.
Los Feliz has always been a neighborhood where the park is part of the address, not just scenery near it. Watching how the city actually executes on three overlapping promises here, on three different clocks, is as good a read on the neighborhood's next few years as any listing sheet. For updates on how these projects intersect with life in Los Feliz and the surrounding hills, our neighborhood page tracks what's changing on the ground, and if you're weighing a move near the park yourself, RSR Real Estate is happy to walk through what these timelines mean for a specific block. Request a Private Consultation whenever you're ready to talk specifics.
