The Richmond Plunge Almost Didn't Make It to 100. Point Richmond Residents Are Glad It Did.

"You just don't see 100-year-old pools," John Schonder, head coach of the Richmond Sailfish swim team, said this month, watching his swimmers cut laps under the vaulted ceiling of the Richmond Municipal Natatorium. Most people in Point Richmond just call it the Plunge.

On August 15, the city threw the building a birthday party. Mayor Eduardo Martinez, County Supervisor John Gioia, and Councilmember Cesar Zepeda cut a ribbon. There were in-water demonstrations, historical displays, and a $1 family swim session that sold out before the day even started. It was the kind of civic afternoon that makes a neighborhood feel like a neighborhood.

But the story worth knowing isn't that the Plunge turned 100. It's that the city already voted, once, to let it die, and a small group of residents talked them out of it for less money than anyone thought it would take.

The Vote That Almost Ended It

The Plunge opened in 1926, funded by a bond issue, built as a two-story indoor saltwater pool nearly double the size of an Olympic tank, with a fountain, observation balconies, and an open truss ceiling that the city itself compares to San Francisco's long-gone Sutro Baths. Richmond had about 20,000 residents then. It would swell past 200,000 during the shipyard years of World War II before settling at roughly 110,000 today.

The building aged the way old masonry does. Its hollow clay tile walls cracked after decades of deferred maintenance, and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake made a bad structural situation worse. In 1997, Richmond voters rejected a bond measure that would have paid for seismic retrofitting. That November, the City Council concluded it had no money and no path forward, and voted to close the Plunge for good.

Here's the detail that tells you how much people already loved this place: it stayed open anyway. Swimmers kept coming, walking past posted "swim at your own risk" signs, until the city finally shut the doors in August 2001. For nine years, the Plunge sat empty in the middle of the neighborhood, a landmark with no purpose.

Why $12 Million Became $1.3 Million

This is where the story stops being about nostalgia and starts being about math.

Richmond Friends of Recreation, a nonprofit founded in 1979, launched something called the Save the Richmond Plunge Trust and started raising money the hard way: appeals to corporations, foundations, and individuals. They pulled in more than $154,000 in cash and over $40,000 in in-kind donations from local business owners. It was real money, and it still wasn't close to what officials thought the fix would cost.

Then, in 2005, an architect named Todd Jersey saw a documentary about the building and thought he could help. Jersey, who runs a small firm in Berkeley, pitched a reopening plan for $1.3 million. A previous consultant had quoted the city around $12 million for the same job. That gap between estimates is what actually saved the Plunge. It gave the fundraising campaign a number people could believe in, instead of a number that made the whole project feel hopeless.

Construction started in August 2008. By the time the doors reopened in 2010, the real total came in around $8 million, still less than two-thirds of the original $12 million bid, and the building had changed in a few specific ways:

• The deep end went from 14 feet to 7 feet, a safety call that also meant the old high dive board had to go
• The mushroom-shaped sculpture that used to sit in the shallow end came out and now lives outside as a mosaic fountain
• More than a hundred of the building's original operable windows were kept, which means the pool doesn't need the large mechanical ventilation systems most modern indoor pools require
• Solar panels went on the roof, quietly lowering the building's energy bill every year since

None of that happened because the city found a bigger budget. It happened because a nonprofit and one architect refused to accept the number that would have made saving the Plunge impossible.

What Point Richmond Actually Uses It For

A hundred-year-old pool only matters if people are still swimming in it, and they are, constantly, in ways that look nothing like a museum piece.

The Richmond Sailfish swim team practices there. So does a Masters group. The regular schedule runs lap swim and water walking sessions, Aqua Zumba classes, junior lifeguard training, Parent Tot classes, and Tot Splash sessions for kids six and under in a shallow end that starts at two feet. During the anniversary celebration, the city listed its standard lap swim fee at $7 for Richmond adult residents and $8.75 for adult non-residents, the same rate you'd pay on any ordinary Tuesday.

The building still carries the small details that make it feel unlike a rec center built last decade. A large mural by local Richmond artist John Wehrle covers the back wall. The sign above the entrance still reads "Municipal Natatorium," the building's original name, borrowed from the Latin word for a place to swim, and nobody working there today seems entirely sure when the nickname "the Plunge" took over.

Two residents summed up why any of this matters better than a press release could. Otis Mobley, 62, brought his granddaughter Naomi to swim in the deep end for the first time after she passed her swim test, the same deep end he swam in as a kid in the 1970s. "We bring her here to refresh some memories and give her some for her future," he said. Lisa Klein, 73, drives over from Oakland a few times a month. "I love the beauty of the mural. I love the history of it, this big old building," she said. "And as soon as I get in the water and start swimming, whatever problems or things I'm working on dissolves, and I'm just here."

What the Plunge Says About This Neighborhood

Point Richmond didn't get its 100-year-old pool because a government agency decided it was worth saving. It got to keep it because residents disagreed with an official decision, found an architect willing to bet on old windows and honest materials instead of a full teardown, and raised the money themselves. That's not a coincidence specific to swimming pools. It's the same instinct that keeps the neighborhood's historic storefronts intact and its Friday-night concerts running on volunteer budgets year after year.

If you already live near the Plunge, none of this changes your Tuesday. You'll still pay $7, still nod at the mural on your way to the shallow end, still maybe run into someone who swam here in the '70s and never really left. But it's worth knowing, next time you're floating under that truss ceiling, that the building almost wasn't there for you to float in at all.

If you're weighing a move within Point Richmond, or just curious what a home near a landmark like this is actually worth these days, Suzie Koide knows this neighborhood block by block. Reach out for a complimentary home valuation and plan, no pressure, just a straight answer from someone who actually swims in the same water you do.