When it opened in 1994, the construction cost of Vista’s Wave Waterpark was reported to be $3.8 million, almost exactly the amount that the city now must spend to keep the aging oasis in solid enough condition to continue operating.
On Tuesday, the Vista City Council unanimously voted to spend $3.5 million to increase annual park maintenance through 2035. The work will include refurbishment of the park’s lap pool, and to make other improvements designed to keep the myriad pumps, filters and other machinery working at a facility that sees its heaviest traffic during the summer months when local kids are out of school.
While deciding to allocate millions in half-cent sales tax funds to pay for these improvements was the heaviest decision, and there is more work to do in order to address three decades of deferred park maintenance, local swimmers will also receive a more immediate boon.
A sign for the Wave Waterpark is displayed on the tower that’s above its main building. (Charlie Neuman / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Starting as soon as the city can find additional part-time lifeguards, the Wave will resume thrice-weekly lap swimming hours, a beloved amenity that ended in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic and never resumed due, officials said, to an ongoing lack of staffing. In the past, the park was available for lap swimming from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m., Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Restoring this resource, noted resident Thom Holland, is about more than just providing space for master swimmers to practice their hobby. Having used the lap swim himself, Holland recounted watching an older couple arrive, the wife in a wheelchair and in obvious pain, being lowered into the water using special equipment.
“You could still see that she was in pain, but she held onto the side, and she would walk,” Holland said. “This would give her the chance to get some exercise that wasn’t in so much pain, and as she would walk back and forth, she’d get a little bit quicker and her smile would start to grow as she started to remember what it was like not to have so much pain.”
Restoring pool hours at the Wave, Vista’s only municipal pool, he said, provides a significant resource for those with mobility difficulties of all kinds.
“It’s not just for kids or younger people, younger adults, to swim, because there were quite a few ex-swimmers, competitive swimmers, that were there that were quite impressive,” Holland said. “It’s also for the older people, such as myself, that need a little bit of help getting around.”
Those deeper benefits were clearly on the minds of city council members and the committee that birthed the Wave in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when plans were drawn up. Deciding to build a water park, instead of a regular city pool, was actually an attempt to make this community asset pay for itself.
A short piece published on Oct. 29, 1994, in The San Diego Union-Tribune states that “the three-acre park was created by the city to pay for the costs of having the municipal pool, so that the city wouldn’t have to subsidize it.”
High angle view looking east of the Wave Waterpark. (Charlie Neuman / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
It was an idea that won an innovation award from the World Waterpark Association, but one that proved totally wrong. The estimated city subsidy for the park in the coming year approaches $1 million.
The Wave has perennially operated at a loss, its affordable admission fees never covering the costs of operation and thus never generating the hefty reserve fund needed to keep up with ongoing maintenance needs. A comprehensive facility assessment commissioned by the city, included in the agenda report supporting Tuesday’s decision, is filled with pictures of rusting railings and waterslide support columns and eroded concrete decking.
While some of these shortcomings are to be addressed by the council’s multimillion-dollar maintenance decision, that cash won’t be nearly enough to bring the Wave all the way back to those glory days when it was the first in the nation to feature a wave rider machine that allowed boggie boarding in addition to swimming.
Near-term maintenance of the park’s four waterslides is thought to be able to extend their useful lives through 2035, but they will eventually need to be replaced as will that wave rider. The costs looming beyond 2035 are estimated to exceed $14 million, according to the city’s assessment. That critique notes that, beyond the park’s “wet” amenities, many of its buildings are quite degraded, including a front office area with a roof so leaky “that mushrooms are commonly found growing on the office side of the ceiling.”
High angle view looking north of the Wave Waterpark. (Charlie Neuman / For The San Diego Union-Tribune)
While none of the elected leaders on Tuesday said they are thinking of closing the Wave or leasing it to a private operator, as has been recently rumored in the community, there is a growing demand to come up with a long-term survival plan for the Wave, rather than simply applying a fresh layer of Band-Aids every few years.
Vista Mayor John Franklin is leading the charge to consider contracting with a private company to help provide some input on how the park could be reimagined to at least come closer to covering its operating costs, if not generating the kind of profit that could help pay for long-term maintenance needs. He persuaded two other council members to ask city staff to return at a later date with the beginnings of a request for proposals that could be used to solicit plans from private experts, four of whom have already said they think they could help effect a turnaround.
One private company that specializes in operating water parks, he said, has already told the city that it could help turn the operation from an annual million-dollar loss to a million-dollar gain.
“I’d like to get rid of the rust on the water slides; I’d like to get rid of the rusty metal on the pool deck, the pitted concrete on the pool deck, the torn-up plaster in the pools,” Franklin said. “But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had a million dollars net revenue every year, as one of these (private) operators believes that they could produce?”
But some of his colleagues were skeptical.
Councilmember Corinna Contreras said the council had “already defeated the idea of a private operator.”
“We know that a private operator will not give the same courtesy to the residents of Vista that the City of Vista would,” Contreras said.
Franklin responded that he believes the council could seek help from the private sector without giving up control. A contract for help with marketing or operations, he said, would not have to mean higher ticket prices for Vista residents or dismissal of existing city staff or the loss of access for school swim teams that now use the Wave.
“I’m talking about somebody to come in and provide strategic advice, both operationally and in marketing,” Franklin said. “I’m not talking about leasing it.
“I’ve never proposed leasing it; I’ve never proposed giving up control. What I’ve said is, let’s outline what our must-haves are, what’s not negotiable.”
Angela Palasik, the park’s manager, said that she knows that more could be done to effectively market the Wave to the public. The problem, she said, is that aging and increasingly unreliable infrastructure make it difficult to confidently sell what may or may not be available from one day to the next.
“How are we going to put out to social media ‘come enjoy your fun day a the Wave’ and then you show up and two slides are down,” Palasik said. “We haven’t been really heavy on the marketing because we haven’t had the maintenance budget to be able to keep up on the attractions.”
Originally Published: August 13, 2025 at 9:43 AM PDT