After a two-year wait, Charlestown residents have access to their public pool again.

They marked the milestone by taking a dip in the newly reopened Clougherty Pool Thursday with the city’s mayor and other Boston elected officials.

Mayor Michelle Wu, decked out in swimming gear, chided her fellow elected officials who didn’t “get the memo” about wearing their bathing suits to the day’s ribbon-cutting ceremony, and directed them to roll up their pants suits and join her and the residents who had been without their beloved pool in the water.

“The Clougherty Pool is a treasured community hub that has helped create so many lifetime memories in Charlestown, and we couldn’t be more excited for our residents to be back in the water this summer,” Wu said.

Before taking a dip, Wu outlined the extensive advocacy, funding and work that was needed to revitalize a 75-year-old pool, operated by the Boston Center for Youth and Families, that, by 2022, had fallen into a “complete state of disrepair,” with a leaking tank, sinking deck and shell that could no longer hold water.

The mayor credited the community for stepping up to gather 2,000 signatures to get the ball rolling for repairs, and state Rep. Daniel Ryan, who represents Charlestown, for helping to secure $2 million in state funding for the project.

The overall revitalization project for the Clougherty Pool was budgeted at $35.5 million. By comparison, the mayor allocated $54.5 million this fiscal year in the city’s five-year capital plan for repairing and renovating the city’s pools.

More than half of city-run pools, or 10 of 18, were closed last summer, but the Wu administration said about a third would be online by this summer, when considering the four, including Clougherty, that were expected to reopen.

The repairs in Charlestown have resulted in the reconstruction of two new outdoor pools, a pool deck and filtration room. Highlights include a new six-lane lap pool that meets USA Swimming competition certification standards with removable starting blocks and an accessible ramp, a new 2,970-square-foot family pool, and spray equipment features, the mayor’s office said.

While the day was celebratory in nature, the lead-up to the pool’s reopening was not without controversy. After the pool’s sudden closure in 2022, Charlestown residents quickly organized a new advocacy group Friends of the Clougherty Pool and pressed the city for answers, through protests, petitions, and letters.

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“The pool was everything to us, from Memorial Day to Labor Day,” said Kelli Gillen-Forbes, a member of the group. “When we learned about the sudden closure in June of 2022, the reaction was strong. The sense of loss was immense.”

After persistent action, Gillen-Forbes said the group learned that the pool was “deteriorated and unsafe.” In her remarks, she directed blame away from the current administration, saying that it “became clear” that Mayor Wu and the City Council had inherited the problem.

“They were not the cause of it,” Gillen-Forbes said. “To their credit, they responded with an unprecedented $30 million investment to build a new, accessible Clougherty Pool. What an amazing pool it is.”

Mayor Michelle Wu joins others in a ribbon cutting at the reopening of the Clougherty Pool in Charlestown. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)