If you are a competitive swimmer and born in the 70’s or 80’s, growing up, all of your biggest swim meets probably occurred on a major university campus. Major meets most likely were swam at the University of Minnesota, the University of Texas, and even the University of Nebraska, at Omaha. Today, you are just as likely to swim a meet at Southern Methodist University as you are at the Birmingham CrossPlex in Alabama, St. Peters Rex Plex in Missouri, or the Tupelo Aquatic Center in Mississippi. More and more pools are being owned and operated by school districts, municipalities, private swim clubs and individuals. The face of the swimming pool is changing.
Tupelo (photo credit: Shannon-Sheridan)
Why are so many city governments and private organizations spending dollars on competition swimming pools? We all know water of any form is a great selling point for a community, but the biggest difference in today’s market is that people are realizing that a natatorium can be sustainable. Here are some ideas that help make this possible:
- Learn to Swim
- Water Fitness Programming
- Physical Therapy
- Partnerships
- Economic Impact
- Part Of Complete Recreational Centers
- Recreational Water
Learn to Swim
The key to any facility’s sustainability is a good learn to swim program. Learn to swim can encompass all ages and all abilities. Gone are the days of just kids learning to swim. In todays learn to swim marker, swimmers of all walks of life are learning the importance of water safety. Some these programs might overlap with swim teams during the popular after-school hours, but a properly planned and designed facility can accommodate all users at the same time.
Water Fitness Programming
One of the biggest off-peak hour events to help generate revenue is water fitness. With the overall fitness market continuing to grow in the United States, water fitness has been an expanding trend. Historically water fitness has included almost solely just water aerobics classes but today these programs might include programming such as Water Zumba, water-running training for marathon teams, water fitness boot camp classes and cross training space for basketball, football, and soccer conditioning.
Physical Therapy
Yet another way to fill the daytime hours of an aquatics center is joining with a physical therapy professional to offer water pt. Some facilities offer bodies of water that are solely for physical therapy. If this isn’t a possibly, water treadmills and water bikes can also be added to a shallow water pool to provide some of the physical therapy design features needed to rehabilitate many different types of injuries.
Partnerships
The face of the modern competition pool includes many organizations coming together to make a complete aquatic facilities. YMCAs, cities, school districts, hospitals, and swim teams are all joining forces to create aquatic centers that offer all the amenities that a community needs. Modern competition facilities might include special dedicated water for community hospitals. Pools that were historically used for warm-up/warm-down are now designed as multi-use spaces that can offer YMCA/Red Cross lesson programing and water fitness programming during the day. Every partnership is unique, as some partners might bring upfront capital to the project, while others are supplying operating expertise or guaranteed revenue.
Economic Impact
Economic Impact is a buzzword in today’s business environment. Providing a competition pool for events and programming is more than just offering a service to the community. Competition venues provide the opportunity to host large swim meets or water polo matches that bring in teams from across the nation. These traveling teams will purchase hotel rooms, food and beverage, and entertainment while they are in town, bringing more revenue into the city and your program. Partnering with local businesses to receive a portion of the business your events bring in can help pay for the costs of hosting such a large event.
Recreational Centers
While recreational centers are not a complete new element of competition pools, they have always been a key financial component of making competitive water self-sustaining. The revenue generated on the “dry side” and the shared expenses of management help create a sustainable bottom line.
Recreational Water
Along with recreation centers, recreation water, has also been a key component of offsetting operational expenses of competition water. Activities like “Swim in Movies,” climbing walls, and inflatable water features can change competition water into temporary recreational water to help create other revenue streams.
The Next Wave
The face of competition pools have changed greatly in the last 30 years and have even taken shape in the last 10 or 15 years. Surely looking in the future the face of the competition pool will change again. For profit swim centers and idea of elite training centers are starting to happen in today’s competitive swimming market. Only time will tell if these ideas or first adopter facilities will catch fire and become the next wave of competitive facilities.
About Us – Counsilman-Hunsaker
The history of Counsilman-Hunsaker is valuable in the context and the confidence it provides. Over the past 45 years, we’ve led the industry by completing more than 1,000 national and international aquatic projects of every size and complexity. In fact, many of the innovations that are now standard in the industry were conceived by our team.
Counsilman-Hunsaker believes that people of all ages are changed for the better through aquatic experiences and that our services reach beyond just solving design, or engineering or facility operational challenges. Our mission is to create aquatic experiences that transform people and communities, which supports our mantra of “Aquatics for Life”. And when we say “Aquatics for Life” we’re talking about the lives of humans we serve through every decision from conception, to the detail of daily operations. By focusing and serving the human experience, our full circle approach to everything we do allows us to be your guide every step of the way from facility audits, to program and design, thru facility creation and day to day operations.
Along the way, we’ve developed an international reputation for innovation and integrity, as people who are passionate about what they do and who do it exceptionally well. Today, our firm consists of an integrated team of designers, engineers and operational specialists with incomparable aquatic industry experience.
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Another focus can be on expanding the number of pools by building 25y or m pools or convertible. Those cost much less that a 50m competition-ready pool, and arguably can impact more people.
Here’s the way: assume that one of the recently-built 50m pools can host all the main competitions. Build a completely serviceable 25y/m pool for a fraction of the cost, and have money left over to build other pools. It’s amazing how far an 8-10 lane pool can go, especially when you can have 2 for the price of one at different sites in a district/town/city.
Districts can get intimidated by the price tag of the great 50m pols, and balk at the cost. Why not… Read more »
Over in the UK – In Kent ( a population of just under 2M ) we have zero 50m pools. Everyone agrees they are beneficial, but nobody want to take the business risk to fund them. The UK has less pools than Paris (France).
Rather than focusing on the states with the most 50M pools, let’s highlight the ones with the least to elevate the issue. Illinois is the 2nd largest USA-S LSC in the country and arguably the largest LMSC (Illinois Masters) yet only a handful of 50M pools exist across the state. Case in point, nearly all our championship meets are held in Pleasant Prairie WI. Thank goodness it is so close but we need help with this water shortage crisis!
Agreed. We should celebrate successes but also focus on States that are obvious failures and have room for significant improvement. For example, competitive swimming is a High School Sanctioned sport in 47 of the 50 states. The three failing states are Idaho, South Dakota, and New Hampshire. We should have national swimming leadership come together and put significant political pressure (and legal pressure if needed) for force compliance with Title IX in the failing states. We are the best swimming country in the world and there are three states which can’t get their acts together, which is unacceptable.
If only the Seattle/Eastside had as many pools as they do soccer fields. Being from the East and living in AZ & CA, I am amazed at the lack of pools and more importantly, 50 meter facilities around here. Vote YES on Prop 1 to build the ARC.
Take California you have Belmont shores built in 1968 and Mission Viejo pool built in 1972 plus 50 meter pools at some community colleges gong back to the 1960’s.
Pleasant surprise to see a picture of my home pool on swimswam 🙂
I would really like for swim swam to do a list on the states with the most 50 meter pools I know California is up there, but I also know Indiana almost every high school has a 50 meter pool.
Up here in Maine we have no LCM pools 🙁