Photo Credit: Clark County Parks & Recreation
Clark County in Las Vegas, Nev., serves a very diverse population. The department has all of the amenities for them, from swimming pools with water park features, such as slides and play areas just minutes from the world-famous Las Vegas Strip, to rectangular lap-style swimming pools next to cow pastures. And, of course, this kind of diversity among facilities and community wants, needs, and expectations brings a distinct set of challenges.
As most aquatic professionals know, planning for summer begins in the fall. We have barely put away the equipment from summer when it is time to start inventorying for the upcoming summer. With such an exhausting and demanding schedule, it is easy to fall into the curse of the cookie cutter—programming every pool exactly the same: same old swim lessons, same old open swim, same old water aerobics, with the same equipment, same programming, same scheduling, same everything. But not all pools are created equal—literally. And just because something works at one pool doesn’t mean it is going to work at every pool.
Clark County’s aquatic division is comprised of 17 facilities—three indoor, year-round lap pools, two year-round, indoor senior center pools, seven seasonal outdoor pools with waterpark features (i.e., shallow beach entry, water slide, and playground) and five seasonal outdoor rectangular pools. The majority of these facilities are in metropolitan Las Vegas, though one is in Laughlin, and three are in rural areas—two in the small community of Moapa and one in the even smaller community of Indian Springs near the Creech Air Force Base.