Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall promised west-side residents a new swimming pool at Glendale Regional Park in January 2024. Now that pool is gone from the park’s next construction phase, even though it remains listed on the city’s website as of Thursday.
A Promise That Didn’t Make It Into the Blueprints
The park sits on the 17-acre site of the old Raging Waters waterpark, according to The Salt Lake Tribune. City spokesperson Jana Cunningham confirmed to the Tribune that the pool is currently not included in designs for the park’s next construction phase, a reversal that has drawn sharp criticism from residents like Matt Finnigan, who told the paper the city keeps making west-side promises without following through. Salt Lake City began planning the park and demolishing the abandoned waterpark facilities back in 2021, and west-side residents have continued urging the city to build another place to swim and cool off.
The city’s own history with the site explains why the stakes feel so high. The property once housed Raging Waters, later rebranded Seven Peaks, a waterpark built in 1979 that featured the world’s third wave pool before it closed permanently in 2018 after falling into disrepair, with repair estimates topping $20 million, according to the city’s own account of the site’s history. Demolition crews began clearing the derelict facility in October 2021, crushing concrete on-site for reuse as road base and salvaging fiberglass water slide sections for repurposing into park shade structures, per the city’s record of the project.
Splash Pad In, Pool Out
Instead of a full pool, Glendale Regional Park will open a splash pad in 2029 that incorporates parts of Raging Waters’ old slides, per the Tribune’s reporting. The city’s Public Lands Department plans to start Phase 2 construction in Spring 2027 with a targeted full opening in Spring 2029, and project records show the splash pad is meant to reuse those preserved fiberglass slide sections as shade and play elements. Mendenhall has said the Glendale park should be resilient, water-wise and sustainable for decades, according to the Tribune.
Why drop the pool at all? Salt Lake City stopped pursuing it because of fiscal and operational challenges, the Tribune reports, rooted in a jurisdictional quirk: the city’s Public Lands Department does not operate aquatic facilities of any kind. Salt Lake City explored a partnership with Salt Lake County to operate the proposed pool, but the county determined that taking on a new aquatic facility was not feasible at that time. Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation already operates every municipal pool in the city, including the indoor pools at the Sorenson Unity Center and Northwest Recreation Center and the outdoor pools at Liberty Park and the Salt Lake City Sports Complex — because, as county records confirm, Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation runs all municipal aquatics in the city under an interlocal agreement, since Salt Lake City itself operates no recreation centers…