STOCKTON -- With a splash, McKinley Park and Swimming Pool is back.
Getting to the moment of cutting the ribbon during Tuesday's ceremony took an entire decade of effort.
"The building was brown and dingy. There was a fence around it, but people still scaled the fence and would go in here, which is why we then ended up having problems," Stockton Mayor Christina Fugazi said. "This is night and day from what it looked like."
McKinley Park and Swimming Pool started as mineral baths in the 1990s, but after decades of vandalism, the city decided to shut its doors in 2015.
Over the past 10 years, the area has sat empty with no pool access and a withering park. Then, in 2021, the city gathered enough money to begin the design process.
After four years, the project was completed ahead of schedule and under budget.
For neighbors who have seen the progress of this park over the past decade, this reopening means much more than just beating the summer heat.
"Transformative, it really is," south Stockton resident Shawn Bennett shared. "I look forward to being here almost every day, bringing my friends here, my family here. It's like what the mayor said, it's generational right here. This is it. This is the real thing."
Fugazi was the first to cannonball into the brand new pool. As a Stockton native, she can't wait to see the park bring the community together.
"We're one Stockton," she said. "When we do stuff like this, the South community feels like they're part of that one Stockton. We're all in this together."
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