Yesterday, we started to crack a joke about how McCarren Pool would become a swimming pool again around 2030. Boy, were we wrong. The Waterfront Preservation Alliance of Greenpoint and Williamsburg is reporting that money for recreating McCarren as a pool could be available sooner rather than later:

…the Mayor’s FY2008 (begins July, 2007) budget includes $3.85 million for planning and design development. In addition, the City has promised $46.2 million in FY2010 (begins July, 2009) for the restoration of the pool. That means that honest-to-goodness planning could start as soon as this July, and that the construction budget would be part of Bloomberg’s last budget.

Word from Community Board #1’s District Manager Gerry Esposito is that the plan the City is working on is to rebuild the pool as an Olympic-sized pool. We’ll reserve judgment on the plan itself until we see the details, and for now applaud the fact that the McCarren Pool might soon have water.

An Olympic-sized pool would only be about one-third of the size of the former pool, which already seems to be causing some handwringing in the neighborhood.