Advice on building a new facility

USA Swimming hosts a multi-day "Build a Pool" convention every year. Talk to local club team and get in touch with the Zone rep

Has a feasibility study been done to determine what type of facility the community can support? I recommend Councilman-Hunsaker for pool design. https://counsilmanhunsaker.com

Several other companies are The Isaac Sports Group and Myrtha Pools.

The key, as Coach Brenner asks, is the feasibility study to assess what the community can support.  And, regardless of the company/consultant being used, the community group needs to be incredibly involved to avoid an "over-sell" by the consultant in terms of attendance, weather limitations, maintenance costs, staffing needs, etc..

Hope it will be indoors too. :) Northern Arizona is any area I like, but don't see alot of pools in the area.

Camillevh1 what city or cities are you looking at?

Thank you for the input. Yes- this will be an indoor space, the temp in that area gets a bit chilly. The land has been purchased and a lot of the planning has been done for the lands around this space. The idea is to provide a large scale community center and aquatics facility for the benefit of the Native tribes surrounding the area, and also bring in revenue through a well run pool and training facility. The idea of building it to the size that it would bring in top level meets came from one of the board members seeing what potential a pool can have watching some of the large meets come through his local area (that finally built a top notch facility). I believe a feasibility study has been done about the community center, but not sure about the pool itself. I will pass on the info and the "build a pool" convention may be a perfect way to look into this. 

Thank you for the help. They reached out to me knowing I was part of the masters community :-) 

You guys are the best- 

CMT

I would do a search of other communities with similar community-aquatic centers, in locales with similar climates, geography, populations, etc…and see what things about their centers are popular and liked, and what things aren’t liked. Use their experiences to help make your center something that will be popular with your community.

Dan

Agreed, Kevin Post at Councilman-Hunsaker is incredibly knowledgeable, a great communicator/presenter, and has an even-keeled demeanor, which is important given all of the bureaucratic obstacles involved in bringing a new aquatic center to fruition.

Following on Dan's comment and my earlier post, I was peripherally involved with a rec pool project 20 years ago that included a 6 lane, 25 meter pool, slide, zero depth, etc..  The construction and design were fine.  The problem was the consultant's economics were based on untenable attendance and no one investigated.  They projected tourism & destination attendance even though the facility is an hour from a major city, no shutdowns for cold weather or summer storms (outdoor facility), length of season for 100% attendance, etc..

So, although the first couple of summers were ok, after that, attendance dropped quickly to just the locals, weather shutdowns became problematic, and they were losing money.  People are not going to do outdoor lessons or slides when it is 60 degrees and cloudy.

Ongoing maintenance as well as preventative maintenance was never planned in as well.  Consultant got paid without any repercussions from bad data.

Consultants can be great, but their don't always walk on water, so-to-speak.  :)