City of Wichita seeks input on future of public swimming pools

Ava Graves, 9, is a fish.

Nearly every day during the summer, she has swim team practice at Harvest pool, a city-owned pool near 13th and Tyler.

And when she’s not at swim practice, Ava goes swimming just for fun at least once a week, says her mom, Cara Graves.

“We like that they are not crowded. Usually when we go, the crowds are manageable, there’s plenty of space,” she said. “But that could be seen as a bad thing.”

Admittedly, the Wichita public pools aren’t modern swim parks, Graves said, and so they occasionally make the trek to the Rock River Rapids aquatic park in Derby.

“I know a lot of people that go there for a day outing. Derby is getting our dollars,” she said.

If approved by City Council members, Wichita’s Park and Recreation Department would have a designated $18 million pool of money to use for aquatic-related capital improvements from 2017 to 2019.

To help determine how to use those funds, park and recreation officials are asking for public input.

“It’s their decision to make. It’s their choice, and we want to get their input,” said Troy Houtman, Park and Recreation Department director. “It’s our responsibility to provide the best options for the money, but we can’t do that without their input.”

The city has several options: repair and upgrade the current pools, replace pools with splash pads, close pools, open a central indoor pool or some combination of those.

Budget, attendance

While $18 million seems like a lot of money for improvements, Houtman says it can be spent very quickly if spread across the city’s nine aging pools. And if the city spends any money on the pools, it will have to address issues with compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act, because only two of the pools are handicap-accessible. College Hill and Harvest are being refitted for accessibility before the pools open Memorial Day weekend.

The current aquatics budget is about $350,000 to operate all the pools and pay for staffing, utilities, water, chemicals, lifeguard supplies, safety equipment and training, Houtman said. Of the 84 staff members, nine are pool managers and the rest are lifeguards.

According to city data, more than 17,000 people went to the College Hill pool in 2014, the highest attendance of all the pools. McAdams pool had the lowest attendance last year, with about 2,319 people.

College Hill residents pay special tax assessments to help support the pool, said Celia Gorlich, president of the College Hill Neighborhood Association.

“All communities certainly love their pools, but College Hill is a little bit special because of the history and the fact that people have monetarily invested in the pool,” she said. “I think it’s sad, but the city – like all cities all over the country – are under fire for how they use money, where they use money. ... I don’t think there’s anybody anymore who thinks that the government – city, county, state and federal – can do all the things it used to do. It’s important for children to learn to swim, and sometimes community pools are the only place they’re going to be able to do that.”

Indoor option

One option is to create a centralized indoor pool, or natatorium. The proposed pool would be 50 meters long with other bodies of water, Houtman said. Because it would be indoors, it could be open year-round and offer programs such as scuba and water aerobics, he said.

“It would be a lot different (than the downtown YMCA),” he said. “We wouldn’t be competing with them.

“Modern indoor pools have a lot of different options that people don’t even realize,” Houtman said.

Building a centralized indoor pool “would take the majority of the $18 million, but it’s an option to look at,” he said. “But we could also host a lot of swim meets, bring people from out of town for these meets, and it’s something that we talked to some of the other providers, the school district, the YMCA and some of the swim team folks, and they were kind of interested in talking more about that.”

Houtman said a central pool could cost an estimated $12 million. One possible location is in McAdams Park at 13th and I-135, Houtman said.

“A large indoor pool would change that park a little bit, but that’s a pretty big park that is central and might spur some other activity there as well,” Houtman said. “We’ve been looking at some other lots downtown or the edge of downtown, and the idea is hopefully folks could still come to the pool using the bus system.”

Another option would be installing more splash pads where kids can still play in water without needing a lifeguard on duty. Splash pads, which are water playgrounds and interactive fountains, are less expensive than pools and have lower ongoing maintenance and operating costs. Tulsa has replaced its pools with splash pads and “used these quite well,” Houtman said. The preliminary estimated cost for a splash pad is $300,000, Houtman said.

But the city would want to make sure that services such as swim lessons are still available in the community, he said. Last year, the city gave more than 8,000 swim lessons.

‘Life support’

The city could update the current pools, but the aging infrastructure of the pools is a big concern for officials, especially if they’re spending money to make the pools compliant with the disabilities law but can’t afford amenities beyond simple slides and diving boards. Officials estimate that repairing and upgrading the pools would cost $2 million apiece, and replacing an entire pool could be around $5 million.

Making repairs and not adding things like slides and splashes will likely not draw higher attendance to help the return on investment, said Brian Hill, city aquatics supervisor and manager for O.J. Watson Park.

Hill calls repairing the current pools a “Band-Aid approach,” and he’s concerned that the city wouldn’t know how long the repairs would last on a pool already past its life expectancy.

“More and more of these pools are going to start to fail if we don’t maintain them and upgrade them as well,” Houtman said. “It’s not that we haven’t been doing maintenance, but it’s just that they’re old.”

The College Hill pool was built in 2000 after the neighborhood agreed to pay part of the cost.

Most pools are decades old. Other than College Hill, the city’s newest pool is Minisa, which was built in 1980. Harvest pool was built in 1963. The McAdams pool was built in 1953.

“When those pools were built, the life expectancy was around 30 years,” Hill said. “So these pools built in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, we’re keeping them on life support in some areas, but we have a maintenance staff that does a good job of making sure they’re inspected and safe. We’ve gotten way more use out of some of them than what was intended.”

And because of budget constraints, the pools currently have limited hours, Hill said.

“We want to serve the public. They’re their pools,” Hill said. “We want them to be used, and we have to close pools at 6 o’clock and we’re really missing the family aspect. People get home from work, they’re not able to come home, change and get off to the pool by the time we’re still open.

“We count pennies. If there’s a slow day, we send staff home. Our actual chemical use has declined over the last several years as we’ve gotten staff more trained and familiar with how to really get the most out of what they’re using. So that’s helped out a lot.”

Whatever direction the city goes, park officials said they will work with partners like the school district, the YMCA and the Wichita Swim Club.

“Aquatics is an interesting group of businesses and people, because we’re not really rivals,” Hill said. “We’re all in the same business, and we all think the same. We all want to see people learn how to swim, see people recreate in the water and enjoy the water safely.”

This story was originally published May 11, 2015 at 7:43 PM with the headline "City of Wichita seeks input on future of public swimming pools."