Full Text
Parks, Trails, and Open Space Plan AQUATIC FACILITY RECOMMENDATIONS- Replacement for pages 45-47 Current county agreements, partnerships, and economic conditions should be considered in the planning of any aquatic facility. The decision to build, develop, or manage any aquatic facility (indoor or outdoor) should be based on the following factors: • Scale of facility. Because a large scale aquatic facility will serve the entire community and be popular throughout the region, the facility should be planned as a community or regional park and be designed to accommodate greater traffic volumes, parking, and other similar considerations. • Type of facility. Trends indicate that shallow water facilities with spray features, slides, current channels and other moving water are more popular than traditional, flat water pools. Facilities that include these water features are called leisure pools. A leisure pool stresses the recreational swimming element and has a majority of its pool area with depths of four feet or less. The shallow water also permits more people in the pool at one time and is more conducive to play and general recreation swimming, rather than lap or competitive swimming. Surveys completed by MIG and partner organizations have shown that these types of facilities draw 2-3 times the number of annual swimmers compared to conventional flat water pools. Community input indicated that there is a need to have outdoor facilities that focus on play and provide social space to enjoy the relatively brief summer season. Opportunities for water play can include water playgrounds or interactive fountains and water features. Once built, interactive water features are relatively inexpensive to operate because they typically do not require life guards since there is no standing water. Smaller scale facilities also present an opportunity to increase access by creating several smaller sites with no gate fee. • Development costs. The scale and type of aquatic facility will drive the initial development costs, including planning, design, building and materials. These costs can quickly reach millions of dollars, and the City-County should be prepared to spend the high-cost of developing such facilities. • Operation and Maintenance costs. In addition to development costs, costs associated with operating and maintaining a facility can reach tens of thousands of dollars per year for water, equipment, heat and support staff to provide safety, management, and maintenance of the facility. The design of such a facility should include development of a detailed operation and maintenance plan. Public confidence in the City County’s ability to manage, operate, and maintain a facility will play a role in the willingness of the voters to fund a major facility.