All across the country, civic leaders and parks
and recreation directors are meeting reality. If the following scenario
sounds familiar, your community swimming pool may be in hot water. Your
30-year old concrete structure is crumbling, outdated filtration and
chemical treatment systems are wheezing with age and competition from
more modern aquatic attractions is draining your user bare. The few
remaining lap swimmers are complaining about fee hikes, as you operate
at an unhealthy deficit.
Maybe you don’t have an aquatic facility at all.
And the natives are getting restless – and hot. They are demanding a
modern family aquatic center just like the one in the neighboring
county.
Buckling under the political heat, you cool
tempers with vague promises of a great new state-of-the-art swimming
facility. Crowds cheer and banners wave. Kids race home to change into
their baggy swimsuits, and you return, triumphant, to your office,
where you are left, suddenly, alone with a daunting reality. Where do
you go from here?
Many local officials around the country are
considering developing new aquatic centers for this communities.
However, with all the unique complexities inherent in this type of
facility – most are reluctant to dive in. Many are finding that the
process is not scary, as long as they have the right plan.
Mapping Out Your Project
An
entrepreneur would not approach a banker without first preparing a
well-researched, thoroughly documented business plan that outlines the
proposed undertaking and defines its products, markets and income
potential. Recreation directors going before a city council for funding
approval, must be prepared with the same kind of supportive materials
and collateral information. After all, what you are doing, essentially,
is starting a business. You’ll have a physical structure to construct
and maintain, programs to develop and direct, employees to hire and
train, expenses and income to manage, financing options to consider –
and in most cases, an investor (in the form of tax-paying constituents
or city council) who will need to be convinced of the facility’s
appropriateness and financial viability.
A well-designed Enterprise Plan – a business plan
for an enterprise not necessarily operated for profit – will describe
how all those areas will be developed, operated and managed. Without
it, you leave yourself open for all kinds of second-guessing,
uninformed criticisms and misguided and unsupported concerns. With it,
you’ll be able to answer all the questions, knowledgeably defend
against the criticisms, and discharge the concerns.
Invaluable Tool
An
Enterprise Plan, however, is much more than an instrument to help you
attain consensus support and funding for your project. Long before you
get to that stage, it will be invaluable as a tool to help you think
about, shape and refine the project – and it focuses that process in
the early stages when those refinements are easier and less expensive
to perform.
Think of it as a map. Imagine you want to travel
from New York City to San Francisco. There are two ways of negotiating
the trip. One is, simply, to get in your car and head west. No doubt
about it, if you keep following the setting sun, you’ll eventually get
there.
It would be more efficient, however, to use a
map. To have a detailed plan when you leave, indicating where you are
going to spend the night, how many miles you need to cover and what
exits to take. Sure, you can still make some side trips, but in making
those choices, you’ll know how they are going to impact your arrival
time, the cost of the trip and other factors.
An Enterprise Plan works the same way. It doesn’t
force you to stick to a prescribed route; you can change your itinerary
anytime along the way. But the plan is detailed enough to evaluate
decisions as you proceed and to let you know how they are going to
impact the overall result. It gets you to your destination in the most
efficient manner, minimizing costly backtracking. On your trip, the
longer you go down the wrong road, the more time consuming and costly
it will be to backtrack to the right road. Similarly, in the
development of your facility, the further along you are in the
development of the facility, the more costly the changes. The more
changes you have to do twice, or do over again, the more expensive the
whole project will become.
Cost of Making Decisions During Design Process
So
the Enterprise Plan, like the map, is important in giving you a glimpse
of the whole picture in the early stages of planning, encouraging
interpretations and changes early in the development process when they
can be made easily and relatively inexpensively.
Where to Begin?
It
can seem overwhelming. How do you know what’s right for your community?
How do you determine the cost? If you build it, will they come? Who’s
going to pay for it? Creating an Enterprise Plan will help you begin to
sort through these questions. Though the finished Enterprise Plan
represents thorough, information-intensive work, it takes form in
stages, with each succeeding step building upon the information
acquired in the previous step. The following is a skeletal outline of
the steps to consider in developing an Enterprise Plan. You must, of
course, build on each of these elements to create a framework that best
fits your individual needs.
Design Programming
At
the outset, this is nothing more than a description of what the
facility will be and who will use it. Will it be an indoor or outdoor
facility? A leisure pool with lots of water play elements and maybe a
wave generator, a competition venue with racing lanes and a diving
tank, or a combination of the two? Once these very general ideas are
specified, you can begin to consider what your construction will entail
and begin to project costs.
Construction and Project Costs
Again,
in the initial stage of formulating ideas, this will be an estimate of
costs to build projects similar to that described in the design
programming stage. These costs include both construction – the brick
and mortar, pipe and wire – and project costs like professional fees,
engineering studies, legal expenses, contingency costs. Frequently,
this stage serves as a reality check against the wish list
characteristics of the initial design program, and often results in a
return to the design program stage to eliminate or revise certain
amenities.
Facility Programming
This
part of the plan explains how you are going to program activities at
the facility to accommodate all the various user groups, while
generating the most revenue in the most cost-effective manner. Simply
put, this stage identifies who will use the facility, and when. With a
programming schedule in mind, you can then devise an operating
structure.
Operating Structure
Once
you’ve determined who is going to be using the pool and when, it’s time
to determine how and by whom the facility is going to be operated. What
kind of organizational structure is going to be required to accommodate
various user groups and supply the quality of service they expect? Who
is going to hire and train the staff? Knowing the Who, When, and How
will allow you to establish realistic budget and revenue projections.
Revenue Projections
The
buzzwords in public facility planning these days are "financial
responsibility." Communities can no longer afford to subsidize of
recreational centers. Local governments and taxpayers can no longer
afford an open checkbook. So, what can be expected in terms of revenue,
and what, if any, will be the level of subsidy required? For this, you
will need to begin a complete inventory of expenses.
Expenses
What
will be the ongoing costs of operation? How much will you pay for
utilities, chemicals, air treatment, payroll, and insurance? These
elements vary widely depending upon geographic areas, type of facility,
seasonal use and other factors.
Each stage of the Enterprise Plan may require a
re-visitation of opinions and concepts that were established in
previous steps, refining the whole picture until, ultimately, the
proposal best represents a facility capable of serving the needs of its
users at a cost that will be acceptable to the community.
When it reaches that stage, all the elements will
be in place for you to make a knowledgeable decision as to whether or
not to pursue the development of the aquatic facility. If you and your
staff or board decide that building is indeed a viable option, then
that same Enterprise Plan will help to reinforce your position and help
you to gain a consensus of support from those responsible for financing
the project.
History is full of notorious public projects that
have soared like eagles on paper, only to hang, once created, like
albatrosses around the necks of taxpayers. By planning ahead, you can
easily avoid that fate and create a facility that will serve the public
well in the present as well as standing the test of time.
Jefferson City Memorial Park Swimming Pool
Faced
with a rapidly deteriorating pool and plummeting attendance, the
Jefferson City (MO) Parks and Recreation Department began investigating
the possibility of building a new aquatic facility. They approached the
facility design process cautiously. By using the steps outlined in the
Enterprise Plan process, they were able to create a world-class family
aquatic center that is bringing in visitors by the thousands.
After completing an extensive engineering
study, officials asked engineers to develop a series of wide-ranging
conceptual designs for them to consider. Design possibilities ranged
from a bare-bones concept that would simply restore the pool to its
1948 condition, to a complete make over that would alter the entire
shape of the pool and introduce new amenities. Construction and cost
projections were laid out for each scenario so judgements and
adjustments were easier to make.
Next, a feasibility study helped to analyze
the needs and desires of the community. This market research considered
elements such a programming opportunities, attendance, cash flow and
revenue and expense projections for the newly operating facility.
The final design included a modified 50-meter
pool with water walks, play features, fountains, sprays, slides and lap
lanes; a 200-foot water slide; a water spray waterfall; a separate baby
pool; a renovated concession areas; and new decking, piping and
recirculation equipment.
NRH2O
After
following a similar procedure, officials at North Richland Hills (TX)
Parks and Recreation made the bold move into the municipally operated
water park industry. Since its completion, the $7.8 million NRH2O facility boasts more than 150,000 visitors each summer.
Market analysis and feasibility studies
helped recreation officials and designers create a family-oriented park
that integrates attractions and activities for everyone. The park
offers a leisure pool with water play structures, kids slides, sprays,
log walk, and lily pads, a water playground, a wave pool; and an action
river tubing ride. The entire area was designed as "park within a park"
and includes green spaces, intricate landscaping and dry areas. Initial
exit surveys indicate that the park is a great success.
Thornton, CO
Serving
the Denver area communities, the new recreation center offers flexible
aquatic programming with an indoor wave pool and separate leisure pool.
The overall concept includes something for everyone.
Granite City, IL
In
developing a new aquatic complex, the park district agreed upon a
flexible design offering both recreation and traditional amenities. The
basic eight-lane, 25-yard configuration grew to include zero beach
entry, water sprays, body slide and teaching stations.