Butler has been awarded a state grant to demolish the Memorial Park pool and pool house, which have been closed since 2004.

Butler has been awarded a $102,000 state grant to demolish the Memorial Park pool and pool house, which have been closed since 2004.

The Butler County Housing and Redevelopment Authority applied for the grant on behalf of the city in August 2020.

State Rep. Marci Mustello, R-11th, said the grant was awarded through the Commonwealth Finance Authority’s Blight Remediation Program.

The pool was a main attraction in the city when it opened in August 1950 and continued attracting big crowds through the 1980s, but attendance plummeted in the early 1990s.

After the pool closed, there was a grassroots effort led by teachers at Broad Street Elementary School to repair the pool’s leaks and broken filtration system and another local effort to convert the pool into a water spray park, but neither succeeded.

This is an excerpt from a larger article that appears in Thursday’s Butler Eagle. Subscribe online or in print to read the full article.