Southfield officially broke ground Wednesday on a roughly $26 million Aquatic Center that will bring a lazy river, an indoor-outdoor water slide and a splash pad to the site of the city’s long-closed municipal pool. The ceremony took place outside the Southfield Sports Arena at 26000 Evergreen Road at 4 p.m., marking the start of construction on a project years in the making for a city that has gone without a public pool since 2022.
The project calls for a 28,000-square-foot addition, renovation of roughly 10,000 square feet of existing facility space, and demolition of the former outdoor pool, according to the City of Southfield. As LittleGuide Detroit reported, the new center is expected to open in winter 2028. The city’s previous pool, which dated to the early 1970s, had sat closed for more than three years because of aging infrastructure, per a report from C&G Newspapers.
What’s Going In the Water
The city’s announcement details a long list of attractions planned for the new center. Among them is a 4,900-square-foot leisure pool with zero-depth entry and interactive water features, along with a lazy river featuring spray elements and a conversation cove, the city says. The project also includes a children’s water play area with a splash pad, pool bubblers, spray features, ground-level water jets and double kiddie racer slides.
Swimmers hoping for more serious laps will get a 75-foot, four-lane pool equipped with starting blocks. The facility notes it will also include a therapeutic pool intended for water aerobics and low-impact exercise, supporting both fitness programming and gentler community use. The city’s plans round out with new locker rooms, an event space and a wet classroom designed for swim lessons.
An Indoor-Outdoor Slide and a Long-Running Resident Request
One of the more distinctive features is an indoor/outdoor water slide described by the city as one that travels outside the building before returning indoors, a design meant to make the center usable in every season. Southfield officials have said the new facility is intended to operate year-round given its cost, with one official noting it would be too expensive to build a pool and use it only part of the year, the same report from C&G Newspapers states…