Put the aquatic center off Road 68? Pasco board to consider water park sites
A new sales tax to pay for Pasco’s long-in-the-works aquatic center doesn’t kick in until January, but the board guiding the process is already getting ready to come out of the gate running.
Six months ago voters approved a 0.2% sales tax increase in Pasco to pay for a new aquatic facility. That amounts to 2 cents being collected on a $10 purchase, and is expected to raise $40 million to build and operate the facility.
Since the vote passed with a 10% margin in April, the Pasco Public Facilities District board has been busy laying the groundwork for the project.
As early as it might seem to be in the process, already the board has been approached by at least one group looking for a partnership and to sell them a plot of land.
As proposed, the facility will be built on about 4.6 acres — the first phase would be nearly 47,000 square feet and the second just over 13,000 square feet.
The first phase includes an 8,000-square-foot indoor leisure pool, a 20,000-square-foot outdoor activity pool, a party room, classroom, outdoor concessions and locker rooms.
The next phase would see an 8-lane, 25-yard indoor competition pool added — paid for with the cash balance of the bond.
The plans could see some changes, though, as they enter the design and public input phases.
What’s next?
So far the facilities district board has taken some major steps, that might not seem like that big of a deal to the general public, but are critical to building the operation.
The board is a volunteer group made up of community members. Their goal was to put forth a plan for a facility and advocate for it, but now that the vote has passed they find themselves at the helm of a multi-million-dollar project.
It’s a big task for volunteers whose background might not be working in government or in development, so they’ve hired someone community members are familiar with to lead the way — former Pasco Mayor Matt Watkins. He is now the project manager for the endeavor.
Watkins served on the Pasco city council and as mayor over 16 years, before taking some time off to travel.
He told the Herald that as he returned from volunteering in Ukraine, he was asked if he would be interested in coming onboard.
“The city manager working with the PFD wanted someone who might tick the boxes on the skills they’ll need now and going into the future,” Watkins said.
Not only is Watkins familiar with the world of municipal government, he’s actually one of the people who advocated for the Washington state legislation that allowed the vote to fund the facility, after several nonstarter attempts to build a regional aquatics facility.
Watkins served on a regional PFD back in 2006 for a Tri-Cities facility that voters rejected, and would go on to help secure the “Vote-to-Float” bill in 2019, allowing Pasco to strike out on its own to build a facility.
With his experience in city government and with facilities districts, he was an ideal choice to help lead the group on a process that few others in the state have reached in the three years since the “Vote-to-Float” bill passed.
“I’m that initial first staff member to help out a volunteer group who meets one time a month,” he said. “Instead of doing the typical, ‘Here’s the bills and pay for them.’ We’re going to do a little bit of a longer form workshop meeting (this month) to actually talk about the overall plan with some detail. There’s going to be a lot of discussion and followup from that meeting.”
His first major task has been helping the board update its bylaws and rules to allow more involvement with the city. Watkins said that while they are a semi-autonomous agency, it makes sense to partner with the city or contract for their services in many areas.
The board also will be looking at a bridge loan to begin paying for services between now and when revenue starts coming in next spring.
And it’s a good thing, because Watkins is eyeing an ambitious timeline to launch the facility. He wants the board to look toward October 2024 as its goal for opening the first phase of the park.
“I think it’s a very optimistic time frame, and frankly I chose it to put a line in the sand to talk about it at the next meeting. Two years from now,” he said. “It gets cooler (that time of year). If we’re doing to a year-round facility, being able to have the opening at the end of summer is attractive.”
Public outreach
Watkins said that this would mean commissioning design work in the next few months, and then hosting open house type meetings to share the vision with the public. He’s hoping to see some community outreach start early next year.
“You’re seeing them kick into gear to accelerate. The board is going to get to a point where they’re going to want to start thinking about some design work and public involvement as more milestones along the way happen,” Watkins said. “The community has been involved for well over a decade in the formation of an aquatics center. We’ll be building on that involvement and re-validating with the community.”
Watkins wants the public to share their ideas and hopes for the water park, and even wants to host a series of meetings with the students who will be using it.
“We can make it a fun exercise to go through and include some of those ideas to make sure we’re on the right track,” he said.
Ultimately, their goal is to design an aquatic center that community members feel invested in and will want to use for years to come.
Location, location, location
Over the past decade there have been many locations proposed for the facility, but none have been decided on yet. That could soon change though as the PFD gains purchasing power.
At its most recent meeting a representative for LifeQuest told the board they were interested in presenting a proposal for a partnership, and location. While the details of the potential partnership haven’t been made public, the location would capitalize on LifeQuest’s proximity to the HAPO Center and the Pasco Sporting Complex.
The Wellness Center by LifeQuest is at the end of Convention Place, and they’ve got five acres situated between their facilities and the sports fields that they feel would be the perfect fit.
While the location is certainly convenient, board members were concerned about access.
Water park users would need to use one of the busiest and congested stretches of road in the Tri-Cities at the intersection of Road 68 and Burden Boulevard, north of the Interstate 182 interchange.
In an online poll earlier this year, Herald readers voted Road 68 and Burden the most dangerous intersection in the Tri-Cities.
Watkins said finding a solution to the traffic issues would be a particularly heavy lift.
Other possible sites
Another location most recently discussed is in the future Broadmoor Development also in west Pasco.
The development’s planners have offered to reserve a 5-acre plot near a future transit hub that would be off the Sandifur Parkway extension.
Grading work has began on the north end of the development, which will be home to thousands of new homes, apartments and other living spaces.
They’ll soon begin cutting roads through the sand and sagebrush covered fields. If all goes to plan, their extension of Sandifur should align with the aquatic facility’s planned opening in late 2024.
The area also will be home to a massive new retail development, akin to an outdoor shopping center.
At one point another 5-acre parcel off Broadmoor and Chapel Hill Boulevard was also mentioned as under consideration.
Over the next few months the PFD board will set a budget and talk through their options before deciding on where to place the park.
The PFD meetings are open to the public, and streamed online on the city of Pasco’s Youtube page.
Their regular meetings are normally scheduled for 4 p.m. on the third Tuesday of the month.
This month’s workshop meeting is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 25.
