A floating swimming pool that this summer drew big crowds to a former industrial pier off Brooklyn Heights set sail across New York Harbor yesterday to a winter home in Bayonne, N.J.
When it comes back to New York next summer, the popular Floating Pool Lady, carved out of the deck of an old barge, will dock in The Bronx, most likely at Barretto Point, in Hunts Point.
“That is a community much in need of a pool,” said Ann Buttenwieser, founder of the Neptune Foundation, which built the floating pool and hopes someday to fill the city’s crumbling shoreline with similar venues.
“Boys and girls there are swimming in the Bronx River, which is disgusting,” she said.
The 25-meter pool and a makeshift sand beach transformed an old pier and parking lot next to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway into a family friendly party for 10 weeks this summer, hosting 72,000 visitors from around the city and the world.