UltraCOOL ADA50 Manual de usuario descargar pdf (Pagina 22)

22 AMUSEMENT TODAY October 2010

City of Baytown, Texas opens Pirates Bay Water Park

Kimley-Horn & Assoc.,

Counsilman-Hunsaker,

WhiteWater West and

Aquatic Dev. Group

key project suppliers

Mary Wade Burnside

Amusement Today

Pirates Bay Water Park in

Baytown, Texas, opened its

doors June 23 and even before

Labor Day arrived, 60,000 cus-

tomers had taken advantage

of attractions at the munici-

pally-owned facility including

a Flowrider, a 671-foot long

lazy river and a four-lane mat-

racer.

“We gured we’d get

40,000 for the rst year,” said

Scott Johnson, the parks and

recreation director for the city

of Baytown. “We’ve been over-

whelmed by the numbers that

are coming, which is a good

problem. We need to build

more parking. That’s a great

problem to have.”

On sunny weekends, said

Sarah Szymanski, the park’s

aquatic coordinator, “We’ve

had almost 2,000 people who

have cycled through here –

generally about 1,700.”

Pirates Bay was born out

of the perfect storm of neces-

sity and funding. The city of

Baytown had two aging pools

that needed to be replaced, but

rather than just upgrade them,

ofcials thought outside the

box.

“We got out city manager

to allow us to do an aquatics

facilities master plan to gure

out what we were going to do,”

Johnson said.

The city already had $6

million from a half-cent sales

tax from the municipal devel-

opment district. The consult-

ing rm of Kimley-Horn &

Associates was hired and Kim-

ley-Horn brought in aquatic

design engineers Counsilman-

Hunsaker & Associates.

“They came up with some

ideas,” Johnson said. “Our

dreams were bigger than our

budget.”

Johnson and the consul-

tants thought maybe a water

park would have to be built

in phases. But when Johnson

saw a photo of a Flowrider in

a trade magazine, he had an

idea. He tracked down a video

of a Flowrider for a presenta-

tion to city ofcials.

“The mayor stood up and

said, ‘We’ve got to have one of

those,’” Johnson said. “Then

he said, ‘Let’s build it all the

rst time. We need something

for the kids to do. We need to

do something to bring people

into town. Let’s put all this to-

gether.”

So that’s how the city of

Baytown came to hold a bond

election to raise funds for a wa-

terpark.

An additional $10 million

was raised, giving the city $16

million to be used not only to

build the $10.5 million Pirates

Bay Water Park – the name is

a nod to the city – but also to

nance a second aquatic attrac-

tion, at the city’s N.C. Foote

Family Aquatic Center, a $2.5-

$3 million budget pool with

a body slide, a short tower,

four lap lanes and zero-entry

beach, a multi-level play piece,

a crossing activity and an ob-

stacle course over the water,

according to Mark Hatchell of

Kimley-Horn, the principal in

charge of the Baytown aquatics

projects. Ground was broken

on that pool Sept. 2.

At Pirates Bay, ground was

broken January 2009, Johnson

said, and the project was com-

pleted in time for the June 23

opening. In spite of poor nan-

cial reports and gures around

the country, “We hit the econo-

my at the right time.”

After the bond election, the

city had $10.5 million to spend

on Pirates Bay.

“We were in the design

phase and we just hit it perfect,”

Johnson said. “The economy

was going bad but it was not

necessarily bad for us, if you

have money to spend on a proj-

ect. We got great bids. We were

able to do everything. We were

just going to build the slide

tower with the mat racer, and

we were able — because the

bids were so good — we were

able to add the bowl slide, a

couple of tube slides and other

PHOTO COURTESY BAYTOWN PARKS & RECREATION

Pirates Bay Water Park has opened this season to capacity crowds in Baytown, Texas. The

6.3-acre park is owned and operated by the city.

AT PHOTOS / GARY SLADE

Even though the Pi-

rates Bay Water Park

was designed with

families in mind, far

left, it also captured

the thrill factor with

several slides, includ-

ing the mat racers

shown here.

4See BAYTOWN, page 23

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