Thursday, November 20, 2008
Plans for the addition of a pool to the Student Recreation Fitness Center are beginning to take shape. Adam McGonigle, Wichita junior and student body president, who campaigned for Senate elections last spring with the swimming pool as one of his platforms, is showing student groups blueprints depicting three possible designs for the aquatic center.
Last week, Student Senate began meeting with 30 groups, including the Athletics Department and the KU swimming and diving team, to find out what each group would want from an aquatic center and how much they were willing to pay.
“We all want the best facility,” McGonigle said.
The three plans for the aquatic center, drafted by Counsilman-Hunsaker, a St. Louis-based aquatics planning and engineering firm, vary in cost and size. Last year, the proposed aquatic center was projected to cost $20 million.
McGonigle said he did not know the cost of the three different designs for the center because he said it depended on how much the Athletics Department would contribute. McGonigle and Michael Gillaspie, Ashland junior and student body vice president, met with 15 groups, totalling more than 300 students, last week. They presented the floor plans to get feedback and gauge what students wanted.
The plans were not modeled after any other university’s aquatic center, McGonigle said.
“What’s best for another university may not be best for KU,” he said. “The plans we’ve given students will give us a plan of what’s best for KU.”
McGonigle said the third design was the most complete. It would include a 50-meter competition pool with divider walls to allow multiple users simultaneously. The center would also include a separate diving well with a springboard and a platform diving board.
The design also includes a recreational pool with a lazy river, an open-swim area for water basketball or volleyball, and a vortex pool, in which water travels in a circular motion. This aquatic center would also include a 25-person hot tub that would have an indoor and an outdoor portion. It would also have an outdoor wet-deck lounge area and multipurpose classrooms for fitness classes.
McGonigle said the other two plans were scaled-back versions of the more elaborate center depicted in the third plan. Plan two would not have an outdoor area or outdoor hot tub and the diving well would be in the main pool. Plan one is the least complete plan and the diving board would be in the deeper part of the competition pool.
Hannah McMacken, Lake Tapps, Wash., senior and member of the swimming and diving team, said the third plan would increase the swimming and diving team members’ confidence and skill. McMacken said it was difficult to compete in a pool she hadn’t practiced in. The pool in Robinson Center is not official competition-size and is open to students only three hours a day.
“I really see it benefitting the entire University, bringing more attention to Lawrence and to Kansas,” she said. “I think it’s exactly what we need.”
McMacken said the pool would also be a helpful recruiting tool because the only universities in the Big 12 conference that had competition-size pools were the University of Texas, Texas A&M University and the University of Missouri. She said the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, or SAAC, which McGonigle met with last week, generally preferred plan three.
Paul Hefferon, Overland Park senior and SAAC senator, said the focus groups were helping Senate get a taste of what students wanted so the final project would meet everyone’s needs.
“There will still be people who want something different,” he said. “But, in general, there will be something that people will be happy to support.”
— - Edited by Jennifer Torline
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Comments
Student Senate discusses plans for KU aquatic center
What an awful article. Way to cover both sides of the story, Kansan. On one side we have people who support the pool (Student Senate) because Athletics has them in their back pocket. On the other side we have people who support the people (swimmers, divers, and people affiliated with KU Athletics) because they're getting a pool paid for by student fees.
How about a quote from someone who has the opinion that spending $20 million on an aquatic center might not be the best thing for the University at a time when the Governor has asked us to cut our budget by more than $50 million over the next two years?
Amid these budget cuts and a global economic crisis, our brilliant student "leaders" (with an overwhelming mandate from 8% of students) decide we need to jack up student fees to pay for a pool 100 meters away from the pool we already have. But not just a pool; oh no, that wouldn't be enough. We need a "lazy river," an area for water sports, a VORTEX pool that has circulating water (COOL!), and an indoor/outdoor hot tub. I'm disappointed they forgot to include the snorkeling tank with exotic tropical fish, the jet ski arena, and the underwater basket weaving instructional pool.
But in all seriousness, we don't need a new pool. We have a pool at Robinson. And though it's not full competition size, only three Big 12 pools are, so it's clearly not a necessity. If Athletics wants a big pool, they can build one. If students want to use a pool, just extend the hours of the perfectly fine one at Robinson.
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