By  Terry Brannon, PE
Pool Design Consultant

Swimming has changed.   When some of you older park and rec (at 49, I'm one of you) girls and boys went to the pool in your formative years it was to learn to swim,  tan to a medium well done,  show off on the diving board and meet persons of the opposite sex in skimpy wearing apparel. .[I can say that on the Internet can't I?]

These days the kids go to the swimming pool to be get wet from a fountain or spray, raise their heart rates on a slide, maybe play a little sand volleyball, sip drinks in the shade and meet persons of the opposite sex in skimpy wearing apparel.

We parks and rec types have floundered around with our rectangular racing pools with one or two diving boards on the deep end . . . pools which my good friend Bill Haralson calls "sheep dip" pools.  Every summer we open the pool to a few dozen kids granted time-off from school for eight weeks for good behavior and not old enough to be tried as adults.  From the very first week, however, the attendance drops until after July 4 you are down to a dozen kids a day and some grand parents. Every year you go back to your city or town council and explain why they should lose another $100,000 in operating expenses.

And yet, when faced with the opportunity to build a new pool/water park/aquatic center, we commit the same sin of our grandfathers and replace our old pool with a 50-year old NEW pool.  People are different today.  Their needs are different today.  The pools should be different as well!

Aquatic facilities today need to be entertaining.  They need to attract families and groups for all-day outings.  They need to compete for the attention and disposable income of all the age groups.  Sadly to say, that attraction, entertainment, competition will not happen with a 75-foot by 42-foot pool built in virtually every city, big and small, across the U.S. 

Bill Haralson is an economist in Dallas. He works for the aquatic industry essentially doing market analysis to see what types of water parks can be supported in a community.  His studies include publicly owned facilities as well as private.  No one should venture into the water park business without his advice.

Bill and I were talking one day (that was when he mentioned the "sheep dip" pools) and we were discussing the rates cities charge for swimming.  Some operators charge up to $20 per person while most, in Texas at least, still charge $3.00 or less.  In one city in which I work, they charge nothing . . . zero . . . nada . . . and it's worth every penny!   Bill pointed out to me you can't charge for admission if there is no value but if you have value, you can sell that for a fair price. Okay.  I'm an engineer.  I understand that.  So where is the value?

The successful pools and aquatic centers today feature three or more of the following:

• zero depth entry (beach type sloped entries) 
• fountains and sprays, preferably interactive with valves and things to turn
• slides and 'thrill' features for each age group (except older-than-dirt)
• plenty of shallow water

Hundreds of fountains and sprays are on the market.  You can get alligators and snakes that spit at you or umbrella fountains to stand under.  You can get tipping buckets where you can tingle with anticipation knowing that any second somewhere between five and five hundred gallons of water will fall from the sky. You can get play structures with five platform levels and twenty different fountains.  Or you can get Noah's Ark, Treasure Island or a dozen other thematic structures.  How about a water cannon you can just shoot your kid with from the safety of the deck? And my favorite, the water balloon catapult that lets you bomb your friends into submission from thirty feet. [Six balloons for a dollar!]

Slides have largely replaced diving boards at most modern water parks.  They come in all shapes and sizes (and price $$$) from single direction drop slides that dump you mid air eight feet above the water to snaking, twisting tunnel monsters with fifty-foot vertical drop and eighteen major loops shooting you skimming across the water at the end of the ride.  NBGS even has an uphill slide they call the Masterblaster® which more approximates a roller coaster than anything else. Or, your two-year old can crawl through a frogs back and come sliding out into your arms on the frog's three-foot wide, soft, wet red tongue. Now there's a Kodak® moment for you!

Pool users today demand more shallow water.  Our old pools had 40 percent deep water usually dedicated to one or two diving boards.  Forty percent of our pool was occupied with four kids!  Shallow water (5'-0" deep and less) is plenty deep to learn to swim, to do water aerobics, or play water basketball.  Some new water parks, even public pools, have NO water deeper than 2'-0" deep and they turn people away at the gate because of the crowds.  And shallower pools are safer pools. Make your insurance carrier happy!

You will notice I left out two things: racing lanes and diving boards.  Every town ought to have some provision for age group or high school interscholastic competitive swimming and diving.  However, you should not expect a facility for competition to double as an entertainment facility.  Can they be in the same park or even side by side?  Sure.  In Lake Jackson, Texas we designed them under the same roof,  indoors.  Competition pools and entertainment pools have way too many differing design criteria to be put in the same shell!  We can cover those criteria in another article.

So.  Are you going to make loads of money if you do this?  Probably not.  But you will probably lose a lot less and your participation numbers will go through the roof which is the real measure of success in the recreation industry.   Some cities have been very successful (North Richland Hills, Texas for one) in operating water parks.  But these successful cities went into water parks in a very big way, meaning $3.0 million and up.  But where is it written that city parks and recreation departments have to make money or break even.  How much money did you make on your tennis court last year?  Or, for that matter, on your street program?  No, there is more to publicly owned recreation than making a profit.  It's called quality of life.  Some cities have it. . . some don't.  Inquiring minds live in cities that have it.

Call me or write.  We need to talk.

Terry can be reached at tbrannon@brannoncorp.com .  Bill Haralson can be reached at waharalson@aol.com .