St. Cloud Area Aquatic Center Closer to Becoming Reality

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- There is a renewed push to bring an outdoor aquatic center to the St. Cloud metro area.

Greg Gack is the Executive Director of the St. Cloud YMCA. The current Y opened in the spring of 2017 and he says it was always the plan for phase II of the project to be an outdoor waterpark on the north side of the building. However, when COVID-19 hit that put the project on hold.

Earlier this month the Stearns County Board of Commissioners approved a $1 million donation toward the $15 million facility.

Gack says they've also been doing a lot of other fundraising behind the scenes and hope to make a more formal announcement in the coming weeks.

We're hoping in the next two to four weeks we'll be able to come back to our community and really share out here's where we are at, this is what the timeline looks like, and this is what the need is from out community.

Gack says they are reaching out to all of the area cities for financial donations, similar to what they gave for the first phase of the Y.

He says they don't have any formal designs yet, but they do know they want to do it right the first time.

We envision that there will be multiple slides that would impact different age groups, we're talking lazy rivers, zero entry.  There would be concessions.  This would be a place during the summer months all ages would have access and enjoyment to this.

He says this is the closest we've come to actually getting this amenity built in the St. Cloud metro area and they have an accelerated timeline in place to get it done sooner rather than later.

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