Pompey Park in Delray Beach: $59M Rebuild Plans and Details

"Pompey Park is part of the story of Delray Beach," City Manager Terrence Moore said at a lectern near NW 2nd Street on the evening of September 10. "This groundbreaking is about honoring that legacy while creating a new space where future generations can do the same."

The shovels the officials used that evening had been painted by hand two weeks earlier, at a community event where residents and city commissioners sat side by side with brushes. The event paired a community activity with remarks about the park's history and plans for its next chapter. Practical questions remain for park users: how long flag football may be interrupted, which fields close first, and where the park's 150,000 annual visitors can go while construction is underway. For people who use the park regularly, those details will help clarify what to expect.

The $59.19 Million Project: Cost and Scope

The number itself has a backstory. In June, Delray Beach commissioners voted 4-1 to approve a guaranteed maximum price of $59,193,363 with Core Construction for the new recreation center, a figure the city says landed nearly $4 million below the original estimate. Commissioner Juli Casale cast the lone no vote after a debate over cost and timing, one complicated by a late letter from another firm claiming it could shave roughly $4.2 million more off the price. The commission moved forward anyway, and the project now carries the largest parks price tag the city has approved in this cycle.

The design team behind it includes Core, Randolph Construction Group, Hatcher Construction & Development, KEITH & Associates, and Justin Architects. Their plans call for a 54,000-square-foot recreation center, an indoor running track, a new family pool, a playground, and a multipurpose field, all built to Category 5 storm standards. It is a full rebuild of a facility that has served this stretch of northwest Delray Beach since the 1950s, and it is the kind of investment that only shows up once in a generation.

The Name on the Building

As WLRN reported, Pompey Park sits at the center of The Set, the historic neighborhood that grew up west of Swinton Avenue. The park is named for C. Spencer Pompey, a longtime Delray Beach educator who taught and later became principal at Carver High School. In 1942, Pompey joined NAACP attorney Thurgood Marshall in a federal class action that won equal pay for Black teachers in the Palm Beach County school system, a lawsuit built around a $25-per-month salary gap between Black and white educators doing the same job. Eight years later, in 1950, Pompey established one of the city's first organized recreation programs for Black students, at a time when Black residents were barred from Delray Beach's public beaches and pools. The city acquired the park's land in 1978 and gave it his name.

That history is not decoration on top of the renovation news. It is the reason the groundbreaking drew a crowd instead of a shrug, and the reason city officials keep returning to the word legacy instead of just describing square footage. The park has stayed active in the decades since, hosting recreational programs that include the Delray Divas Step Team, the Diamonds and Pearls Dance Team, youth football and cheerleading, adult athletic leagues, and senior programs, all run out of a building that more than 40 civic groups use monthly. Delray Beach native and professional tennis player Coco Gauff has been known to stop by and hit balls with kids on the park's courts, one more thread connecting the neighborhood's present to a facility built out of necessity three-quarters of a century ago.

Construction Details Still to Come

Some practical construction and programming details remain unresolved:

• No completion date has been published for the new recreation center.
• No phase-by-phase schedule exists yet for which fields, courts, or program rooms go offline first, or when they come back.
• No parking or traffic guidance was issued for the groundbreaking itself, despite the event being open to the public.
• It is unclear whether any part of the construction-era programming will require registration or relocation notices in advance.

The city's 2025-2026 annual report, released in August, said construction is "intended to cause minimal disruption to current programs." That states a goal, rather than a schedule. For people who rely on a weekly class, a rental permit, or a youth season, timing for each construction phase has not yet been provided.

What Stays the Same, For Now

One detail did get settled ahead of the ceremony. City staff confirmed in June that Core Construction agreed to demolish the park's existing concession stand at no cost to the city, but not right away. The old building will stand until the new community center is finished and the current one is ready to come down, at which point the site gets graded over rather than left as a construction scar. It is a small decision, but it tells you something about the sequencing: this is being built in a way that tries to keep the park usable in pieces rather than closing the whole property at once.

There is also more coming behind this project. Delray Beach's parks bond from March 2023 still has roughly $10 million remaining, and the city has signaled a formal presentation is planned that could bring major improvements to Catherine Strong Park as well. Pompey Park's rebuild is not an isolated event. It is the visible piece of a broader wave of park reinvestment moving through the city's northwest and southwest neighborhoods.

Where to Find Project Updates

For project updates, visit the city's tracking page at pompeyparkproject.com, which the city has used throughout the process to post construction phase updates and community outreach recaps. The city's September 4 announcement confirms the scope of the new facility, and WLRN also covered the groundbreaking the same week it happened.

For residents who hold permits for the park's athletic fields or meeting rooms, or who run a program based out of the current building, the city's parks and recreation office remains the point of contact for any changes to reservations as construction phases begin. With some scheduling details still pending, residents with permits or programs at the park may wish to check with the parks and recreation office before assuming their usual time slot is unaffected.

Pompey Park has absorbed changes before, including a locker room renovation, a new entrance, and an audio-visual upgrade to the auditorium, while keeping its programs running. This rebuild is larger than those earlier projects. The groundbreaking highlighted the park's history; construction updates can help residents follow how programs and facilities are affected as work proceeds.

Projects like this one are part of what makes a neighborhood feel like more than a collection of addresses, and they tend to shape how a place is talked about for years afterward. If you're curious about what's happening in this corner of Delray Beach, or in any of the neighborhoods nearby, Kirsten Smith is always glad to talk through what's changing and what it means for the people who live there. Let's Connect.