{"id":143572,"date":"2025-08-13T23:11:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143572\/"},"modified":"2025-08-13T23:11:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:11:09","slug":"vista-council-votes-to-spend-3-5-million-on-aging-wave-waterpark-san-diego-union-tribune","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/143572\/","title":{"rendered":"Vista council votes to spend $3.5 million on aging Wave Waterpark \u2013 San Diego Union-Tribune"},"content":{"rendered":"

When it opened in 1994, the construction cost of Vista\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\"AA sign for the Wave Waterpark is displayed on the tower that\u2019s above its main building. (Charlie Neuman \/ For The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0using special equipment.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou could still see that she was in pain, but she held onto the side, and she would walk,\u201d Holland said. \u201cThis would give her the chance to get some exercise that wasn\u2019t in so much pain, and as she would walk back and forth, she\u2019d 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Restoring pool hours at the Wave, Vista\u2019s only municipal pool, he said, provides a significant resource for those with mobility difficulties of all kinds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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,\u201d Holland said. \u201cIt\u2019s also for the older people, such as myself, that need a little bit of help getting around.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A short piece published on Oct. 29, 1994, in The San Diego Union-Tribune states that \u201cthe three-acre park was created by the city to pay for the costs of having the municipal pool, so that the city wouldn\u2019t have to subsidize it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HighHigh angle view looking east of the Wave Waterpark. (Charlie Neuman \/ For The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a> supporting Tuesday\u2019s decision, is filled with pictures of rusting railings and waterslide support columns and eroded concrete decking.<\/p>\n

While some of these shortcomings are to be addressed by the council\u2019s multimillion-dollar maintenance decision, that cash won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Near-term maintenance of the park\u2019s 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\u2019s assessment. That critique notes that, beyond the park\u2019s \u201cwet\u201d amenities, many of its buildings are quite degraded, including a front office area with a roof so leaky \u201cthat mushrooms are commonly found growing on the office side of the ceiling.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"HighHigh angle view looking north of the Wave Waterpark. (Charlie Neuman \/ For The San Diego Union-Tribune)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d like to get rid of the rust on the water slides; I\u2019d 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,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cBut wouldn\u2019t it be wonderful if we had a million dollars net revenue every year, as one of these (private) operators believes that they could produce?\u201d<\/p>\n

But some of his colleagues were skeptical.<\/p>\n

Councilmember Corinna Contreras said the council had \u201calready defeated the idea of a private operator.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that a private operator will not give the same courtesy to the residents of Vista that the City of Vista would,\u201d Contreras said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m talking about somebody to come in and provide strategic advice, both operationally and in marketing,\u201d Franklin said. \u201cI\u2019m not talking about leasing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve never proposed leasing it; I\u2019ve never proposed giving up control. What I\u2019ve said is, let\u2019s outline what our must-haves are, what\u2019s not negotiable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Angela Palasik, the park\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow are we going to put out to social media \u2018come enjoy your fun day a the Wave\u2019 and then you show up and two slides are down,\u201d Palasik said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t been really heavy on the marketing because we haven\u2019t had the maintenance budget to be able to keep up on the attractions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally Published: August 13, 2025 at 9:43 AM PDT<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it opened in 1994, the construction cost of Vista\u2019s Wave Waterpark was reported to be $3.8 million,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":143573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,1370,728,50,8738,3549,3550,7264,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,18013],"class_list":{"0":"post-143572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-local-news","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-north-county","15":"tag-san-diego","16":"tag-san-diego-county","17":"tag-sandiego","18":"tag-top-stories-sdut","19":"tag-united-states","20":"tag-united-states-of-america","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usa","25":"tag-vista"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115023989135884867","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}