Pasco unveils new vision for aquatics center. It’s a much different look

Pasco expects to ask voters to support an aquatics center at the ballot box next summer.

But the version headed to the August primary probably won’t have the gymnasium, jogging track and drop-in center for kids that were on the table in 2016.

The city hopes to ask voters to raise the local sales tax by two-tenths of a percent, with the tax money earmarked to repay bonds issued to fund the project.

The Pasco Public Facilities District met with its aquatics center consultants Tuesday to hash out what the center might include.

The district will refresh a 2016 study that led the city to envision a larger center, backed by the sales tax and city money.

Now, the district is scaling back its vision to include indoor and outdoor leisure pools with slides and diving boards, but none of the community facilities packed into the plan three years ago.

That design would cost more than $30 million to build.

City officials haven’t disclosed how much debt they believe the two-tenths of a percent sales tax will support, but it’s expected to be in the $20 million to $25 million range.

Ballard King & Associates and Barker Rinker Seacat Architecture are the consultants on the project.

They will return later this winter with a revised study, including amenity packages, to guide the process.

The consultants say it’s unusual for a community the size of the Tri-Cities, population 300,000, to have no public indoor swimming pool.

Each of the three cities operates an outdoor pool.

A regional effort failed in 2013 to build a $35 million public aquatics center on Sandifur Parkway in Pasco.

Voters rejected a sales tax request from the Tri-Cities Regional Public Facilities District.

The tax would have been collected taxes in Pasco as well as Richland and Kennewick.

Pasco voters supported it by a margin of 57 percent but it failed because of opposition in Kennewick and Richland.

Support in Pasco prompted the city to move ahead on its own.

It overcame a major obstacle earlier this year when Gov. Jay Inslee signed Pasco’s “vote to float” legislation amending state law to add aquatics centers to the public amenities that can be built by public facilities districts.

The Sandifur property was since been sold. But the proposed aquatics center would mostly likely be built in the Road 100/Broadmoor area, though the site has yet to be identified.

The project would require a minimum of four acres, ideally at a major intersection.

This story was originally published October 24, 2019 at 5:00 AM.