Dallas Aquatic Centers (Master Plan)

Dallas, TX

Counsilman-Hunsaker has enjoyed its long history supporting the city of Dallas with their aquatics program. Services have included master planning, sprayground design, and outdoor aquatic center design.

Starting in 2006, the city retained the team of Counsilman-Hunsaker, Hector Gomez Architects, and Kimley-Horn & Associates to plan and design new spraygrounds in several Dallas area parks.

The 2012 Dallas Aquatic Facilities Master Plan analyzed the future of the existing city-wide aquatic system. Multiple scenarios were developed and studied, including reconstruction of the city’s 20 aging swimming pools in the same locations, constructing larger more diverse aquatic centers on fewer sites, and incorporating additional low-cost spraygrounds.

Reconstructing the existing pools with brand new pools of similar size and configuration would allow the city to offer aquatic facilities for the next 50 years but was not the most cost-effective scenario to implement.  In the long-term, the same components would not meet today’s aquatic user expectations and promote increased interest and attendance from the community.

Feedback from City Council and the Park Board, equitable geographic coverage of the entire city, and site selection criteria were used to develop costs for building fewer but larger facilities, whereby the residents of the City of Dallas would enjoy an updated, diverse aquatic system.

In 2015, the city received $40 million to fund the construction of a new city-wide aquatic system.  The team of Kimley-Horn & Associates and Counsilman-Hunsaker were again retained to help determine which facilities would be included in Phase I and Phase II designs.  Upon completion of the 2015 study, the team was retained to design the entire aquatic system for the City of Dallas including 10 aquatic centers and 6 spraygrounds.

Spraygrounds – 2006-2013

• Campbell Green Park – June 2006
• Lake Highlands North Park – June 2006
• Ridgewood Park – June 2006
  Ferguson Park – August 2008
• Beckley Saner Park – May 2013
• Willie Mae Butler Park – May 2013

Aquatic Centers – 2018-2019

• The Cove at Fretz Park – August 2018
• Kidd Springs Aquatic Center – July 2019
• The Cove at Samuell Grand – September 2018
• Tietze Family Aquatic Center – June 2019
• Lake Highlands North Aquatic Center – June 2019
• The Cove at Crawford – July 2019

Spraygrounds – August 2019

• Grauwler Park
• Jaycee Zaragoza Park
• KB Polk Park
• Kleberg-Rylie Park
• Nash-Davis Park
• Timberglen Park

Phase II Aquatic Centers

Estimated – Summer 2020

• Bahama Beach Addition
• Bachman Lake
• Harry Stone
• Exline Park