The University announced plans on Friday for a new aquatic center on Boston Avenue with construction expected to finish by Fall 2028. The center will feature an Olympic-sized pool that will replace the 80-year-old Hamilton pool located in the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center.
The aquatics center, located adjacent to Sol Gittleman Park and Vouté Courts at the Tufts Tennis Center, will feature a 50-by-25 meter Olympic-sized swimming pool, two 1-meter and two 3-meter diving boards, a room for spectators, a timing system and scoreboard, as well as locker rooms for the teams and community members.
In an email to the Tufts community, the University also announced a tennis pavilion intended to provide a team room for the men’s and women’s tennis teams, in addition to restroom facilities for the athletics fields.
The University hopes to fund 50% of the costs of construction through fundraising efforts and has already raised $21.7 million of their $27.5 million goal thanks to the wide community of university donors.
The Tufts swimming and diving team, which currently practices both on campus and off, renting out MIT’s Olympic-class pool, will relocate to this new center. For the Tufts community and residents of Medford and Somerville, the center will feature fitness and wellness programming and will also serve the Tufts club swimming and club water polo teams.
With the new pool, Tufts will be able to host NESCAC championship swimming and diving meets, an opportunity not currently available given the size of Hamilton pool. Adam Hoyt, the head coach of the swimming and diving teams, said the new center will both serve to create deeper bonds between team members and will better meet the needs of a competitive team.
“This new aquatic center will mean so much to our current and past team members,” Hoyt wrote in a statement to the Daily. “It means that our entire team can practice together creating an even stronger bond between team members. The new aquatic center will be far more representative of the level of competitiveness of our teams and support their needs.”
The program has already reflected a level of competitiveness in recent years with the Women’s teams’ back-to-back NESCAC championship titles in 2022 and 2023 and the Men’s team finishing in the NCAA Division III Top 10 from 2023 to 2025. Hoyt hopes this success will only grow with the new facility.
The current pool only features a 1-meter diving board causing the divers, who compete at both the 1-meter and 3-meter level, to commute over approximately an hour each day to MIT to prepare for meets. To accommodate the large swimming and diving team, which is currently made up of about 70 students, the coaches have to host four different practices a week to fit everyone into the current six-lane pool.
Katharine Skelly, a senior on the Women’s swimming and diving team, explained that a larger pool would both improve the team’s performance and sense of community.
“It’d be both better for performance, but then also for the team atmosphere,” Skelly said. “Because our pool is so small, I can go days without seeing some of my teammates, which kind of sucks, because our sport is already pretty individual. So it’s nice when we actually get to all practice together, but we’re very limited with that.”
The University hosted a Zoom meeting for the local community on Thursday before the announcement to inform residents of the plans and allow them to express concerns and ask questions about the new center. Hoyt began by outlining what the new pool will mean for the team, followed by a presentation from Sasaki, the architecture firm heading the project, about landscape and building plans and concluded with a Q&A.
Residents were largely enthusiastic about the new center, expressing some concerns about community programming and parking. Hoyt said they planned to expand the current programming, which now includes 30 hours of recreational swim weekly, and 13 weeks of swim lessons. Robert Corbett, executive director of capital programs at Tufts, acknowledged that despite an effort to increase parking space on the other side of the lot, there will be a net loss regarding parking.
A community member, Judy, expressed a desire for some kind of art installation to offset the “not-quite brutalist” nature of the new building to which Rocco DiRico, associate vice president, leading the government and community relations team, responded they would take into consideration.
Skelly, though disappointed at not getting to witness the center’s opening, is excited that the first-years on the team will get to practice in the new pool and looks forward to coming back for alumni meets.
“We have alumni meets every three years,” Skelly said. “So it’d be nice if I get to come back for my first alumni meet, and there’ll be a new pool, because the environment of that meet is already so great, and I’m sure with a new pool it would be even more insane.”
