Controversy Floods New Pasadena Pool : Recreation: Minorities say Rose Bowl Aquatic Center is elitist. But the dispute seems to be more a reflection of basic differences about what the pool should be.

Almost from the day it opened, the $6.5-million Rose Bowl Aquatic Center has been criticized for failing to serve enough minority residents.

The allegations splashed over onto the recent District 1 Pasadena Board of Directors race, in which they were used against unsuccessful candidate Nicholas T. Conway, a member of the Aquatic Center board.

But the controversy over the Brookside Park pool involves more than politics. Instead, it seems to signal basic differences about what the pool should be.

Should it provide recreational swimming to all? Or should it be a unique facility specializing in Olympic training in water sports?

Center board members say they have worked countless volunteer hours to turn the abandoned, leaky, 77-year-old Brookside Plunge into an Olympic-caliber Amateur Athletic Foundation Rose Bowl Aquatic Center. They say the center was built with private money, yet the city still benefits.

The center has two large pools: a diving pool with a shallow end that can be used for recreational swimming, and a 50-meter lap pool. It also has a wading pool for small children.

For Pasadena residents, recreational swimming costs only $1.50 for adults and 50 cents for children from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays. Center officials kept the price low since that’s when most people want to swim for recreation; during the week, the cost jumps to $5 for adults and $3.75 for children.

Center officials say the facility was never intended as a “splash” pool. Instead, they say, it gives minorities a chance to enter water sports--diving, swimming and water polo--in which they traditionally have been under-represented.

“I really feel the community does not understand the philosophy of the center,” said board member John Naber, a gold-medal Olympic swimmer.

But critics of the center say the city has been robbed of a neighborhood pool and saddled with a “country club” hostile to minorities.

Their objections are emotionally fueled by a history of discrimination against minorities at the site. They say the minorities now involved with the center, including board members and swimmers on scholarship, are only window dressing to get needed grants and contributions.

They point to nearly $4.5 million in interest-free city loans and grants and a $1 yearly lease from the city as evidence that the pool is publicly funded. The city money was provided up front, to be repaid over five years by private contributions to the center.

“I thought it was a wonderful idea in the beginning,” said former board member Christina Cook. “If only they had lived up to the idea of what they said they would do.”

The history of the pool, opened in 1914 as the Brookside Plunge, is painful for many older Pasadena blacks, said Huntington Library researcher Howard Shorr. In 1939, blacks sued the city because they were allowed to swim only one day a week, the so-called “International Day.”

The city lost that suit but closed the pool rather than admit minorities, Shorr said. Blacks sued again in 1947 and the pool was reopened that year, he said.

For the next 36 years, the pool was one of the few places of public recreation for poor minority children in the area. It was closed in 1983 when cracks were discovered in the foundation.

Then, in 1985, Brian Murphy, coach of the swim team at the Arroyo Seco Aquatics Club, eyed the pool as a possible home for his team, which had been formed a year earlier.

Murphy, a former swim coach at Flintridge Preparatory School, united with parents of youths on his team, former swimmers and other influential backers, including Mark Pisano, executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, and Norman Chandler, son of Otis Chandler, former publisher of the Los Angeles Times.

The group decided to raise money to rebuild the Brookside Plunge as an Olympic-class training pool, open to the public but with special hours for team training. To interest city officials, they offered scholarships for minorities. As Murphy put it: “Who’s going to give Brian Murphy money just because he wants a place for his swim team?”

City Director John C. Crowley, whose district includes the center as well as the minority neighborhoods of Northwest Pasadena, said public access and minority involvement were required by the city.

“From the beginning there were two purposes: to get the enthusiastic participation of an Olympic group and, at the same time, to maintain the public plunge quality that had been there for so many years,” Crowley said.

The Arroyo Seco group formed a nonprofit corporation and got $750,000 in pledges from the Amateur Athletic Foundation, which had $94 million remaining from the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. The Rose Bowl group secured another $5 million in pledges from corporations, foundations and individuals to pay back the city loan.

Cook, a Latina who joined the swim center board in 1988, said she helped secure some of that money by making presentations to corporations. But she said the group had an “ulterior motive” in having her on the board. “They needed persons of color,” she said.

Cook resigned in 1989, saying the center board wasn’t really committed to minority participation.

Terry Wilson, who is black, was the first director of the center. He said he resigned in December to seek a new job after a busy two years overseeing construction and running the center. He is still involved in the center, he said.

Board member Susan Johnson, who is white, is the interim volunteer director. The board is now searching for a replacement who would be paid between $50,000 and $75,000 a year, about the same salary Wilson received.

Currently, the Aquatic Center board has 18 members, including two blacks, one Latino and two Armenians. The center staff of 47, including part-time lifeguards, instructors and clerical help, includes seven blacks and three Latinos.

City Director Rick Cole said some city staff members doubted early on that public swimming and specialized training could share the same location. Center board members repeatedly assured officials that it could be done, Cole said.

But six months after the center opened last June, the head of the Pasadena chapter of the NAACP complained that minorities were being discouraged from swimming at the pool by a “country club” atmosphere and high fees.

In a city with a 53% minority population, the center offered scholarships with the goal of 10% minority representation in its swim teams and programs. Naber said it has had difficulty meeting that goal because it is hard to recruit minorities for sports in which they traditionally have not participated.

Center statistics show that only six of the 185 youths on the diving and swimming teams are minorities. All hold scholarships that cover team expenses, estimated at $100 a month, Murphy said.

Center officials cite other swimming programs as proof of their commitment to minorities. Nine of 20 youths involved in an all-scholarship, two-month, $190-per-student lifeguard training program are minorities. Another 26 minorities on scholarship were among 139 schoolchildren in an Easter week swimming program. And most of the 30 children in a seven-week pilot program for 4-year-olds are minorities, center staff member Mary Pinola said.

But the center has no current count of minorities who hold memberships. Yearly memberships, which allow unlimited entrance during recreational and lap swimming hours, cost $430 for adults, $172 for children and $645 for families, too steep for most minorities, critics say.

Nor does the center know how many minorities participate in weekend recreational swimming.

The center is devising more programs with the Pasadena Unified School District to bring minority children to the pool, Naber said.

Critics say one reason for the city to exert more control is that the center has had tough times financially. In December, the center paid only $340,000 toward a $700,000 annual loan payment. Center officials asked the city to credit it with $329,571 in construction and landscaping costs.

Media coverage of the NAACP charges cost the center $150,000 in grants from two foundations, Naber said.

A new loan being negotiated with the city would charge the center interest in return for lower payments. In addition, the center is resubmitting applications to the two foundations that turned it down, Naber said. A fund-raising telethon is planned May 10 and 11.

In the next month, city directors will evaluate the center and its programs and consider restructuring the loan.

Newly elected Director Isaac Richard, who replaces Crowley on May 6, said he wants the city to help run the center. But that might mean shouldering some costs, and Cole said he doesn’t know if the city can afford it. Officials said it costs $62,500 a month to operate the center. “Frankly, we goofed,” Cole said. “We were told we could have a recreational facility and a world-class training facility. . . . We didn’t know they would be incompatible.”

But center officials say they simply need time to accomplish both purposes. “It’s hard to hear that criticism,” Johnson said, “when you know how hard we’re trying and our door is open.”