In John Irving`s novel ”The World According to Garp,” the title character`s son is constantly aware of what he called the ”undertoad,” a darkly sinister force that could whisk a child away from his playground in the surf to the unknown watery depths below.
There are no undertoads or undertows in landlocked Du Page. There aren`t even any sharks or jelly fish.
But there are more and more people taking the plunge with the recent emergence of elaborate water parks, replacing or at least upstaging the traditional neighborhood pool. And they offer just about every aquatic amenity a human ”fish” could desire.
”Swimming is a very, very important leisure activity,” said Carl Fuerst, president of Leisure Concepts and Design, a company that has been involved in the design of several public and private water park facilities in the Chicago area.
”In this part of the country,” Fuerst said, ”54 percent of the population will swim in any given year. Swimming has literally been at the top of the list of things that the American public enjoys doing as a leisure time activity.”
”The whole Chicago metropolitan area is ahead of the rest of the United States when it comes to aquatics,” said Steve Hartman, director of the Lisle Park District, an agency that opened a new water park last year.
”Traditional pools are boring places to be. You can either sit in the sun or get in the pool, which was often crowded.”
Some of the new parks, such as the ones in Wheaton, Bensenville, Lisle and Addison, are public ventures undertaken by park districts and/or municipalities; others such as the Roaring Rapids park in Oakbrook Terrace and parks built by subdivision developers are privately operated.
A dazzling example of a publicly supported aquatic facility making its debut this season is the impressive Rice Pool and Water Park in Wheaton, built at a cost of about $5 million. The largest pool in Illinois at 27,000 square feet, it offers more than a place to swim laps, practice dives or paddle around. There are giant water slides, sand play areas, volleyball courts and miniature waterfalls.
”There are two building types that are just going gangbusters, and it`s an interesting social phenomenon. Recreation is tops,” said Michael Williams, a partner in Williams Pollock Associates, Ltd., the architectural firm hired by the Wheaton Park District to design the park in conjunction with Leisure Concepts and Design, Inc., of Mt. Prospect and Water Technology, Inc., of Beaver Dam, Wis.
Churches, Williams added, are the second most prevalent type of building experiencing a boom.
”Maybe yuppies are finding their way to the suburbs,” Williams surmised, referring to the increased demand for fancier pools and aquatic gadgetry in the Du Page area. Or, Williams hypothesized, the new parks going up are simply the next generation of pools.
”Most of the public pools were built 20 or 30 years ago. That`s about the life cycle of all the pipes and filtrations systems. They were all built then and they all looked alike,” Williams said.
The Rice park in Wheaton, which opened at the end of May, is built on 15 acres, formerly a horse-breeding farm owned by the Rice family.
The fan-shaped pool features a zero-depth edge that makes entering the water much like entering a lake with a natural shoreline. The pool has three diving boards, one three-meter and two one-meter, at one end, where the water is 16 feet deep.
At about a 90-degree angle from the diving area in a secluded alcove is the water slide bay. There are two body flume slides, one measuring 180 feet, the other measuring 220 feet, that snake along a hillside and deposit riders into the bay. There is also a 200-foot-long slide that riders navigate from inside an inner tube.
”A lot of thought went into concealing the slides from the single family houses so this doesn`t look like an amusement park,” Williams said. This is accomplished by creative landscaping, unobtrusive wood fencing and the park`s strategic design.
A children`s play area, complete with toys that spray and squirt and a small waterfall, is next to the slide area. There are also two sand volleyball courts and a concession area that offers seating in the open and under shaded shelters. A sunning hill is located behind an adults-only lounge chair deck off the pool`s zero-depth edge.
Next year, a second major attraction at the park, the community center, is scheduled to open. That facility, expected to cost $8.1 million, will include a gym, a running track, a theater, craft and workshop rooms and fitness rooms and will be open year round.
”The atmosphere,” Williams said, ”is more park-like than the old 20-foot pool with a chain-link fence.”
In addition to Wheaton`s park, Williams` company is involved in the design of similar water parks in Wood Dale, Naperville and Oak Lawn.
A zero-depth pool, two slides, a water play area, an adult hot tub and a sand play area are planned for the Wood Dale Park District`s water park, scheduled to open next summer as a replacement for the current facility, a traditional swimming pool without the frills, said park district director James Berousek.
The Oak Lawn Park District`s pool design will be a scaled-down version of Wheaton`s new park and will involve the redesign of one of that suburb`s three existing pools, said Marty Larson, Oak Lawn Park District director.
”It`ll give people more of a variety of things they can do. It kind of brings the lake right into the community,” Larson said.
Two private water parks are currently under construction in Naperville. Williams` architectural firm is involved with one of those parks, a facility being built in the Ashbury subdivision on the southwest side of town. The other water park is being built in the White Eagle subdivision on the west edge of town.
Leisure Concepts and Design, Inc., has played a role in both parks`
genesis. The company also had a hand in the conceptual design of the Wheaton park and the public park in Bensenville.
The new parks provide more room, allow wading and make the overall atmosphere a more inviting one, said Fuerst, the company`s president.
”The public is more sophisticated. It has to be a quality experience,”
said Fuerst.
In Naperville, there are also plans brewing for a public water park to be built with the cooperation of the city`s park district, said Glenn Kost, Naperville Park District planning director.
Currently, Naperville has a single public swimming facility, Centennial Beach. ”We recognize the need for a second one. We`re going through preliminary studies for that right now,” Kost said.
Kost said park district officials are considering the construction of a beach, pool or water park, some type of swimming facility, on the south end of the city.
”It`ll be a couple of years before it`ll actually be under construction and up to five years before we open,” Kost said.
The second swim season for Lisle`s Sea Lion Aquatic Park began June 3. The park was fashioned from what Lisle Park District Director Steve Hartman calls a regular, traditional pool at a cost of about $2.3 million, a fee the park district plans to pay off during the next 11 years.
Lisle`s new park, with features not normally included at a regular pool, helped boost attendance to 82,000 during 1988 season from 26,000 in 1987. ”We felt very strongly it was going to be popular,” Hartman said. ”We`re a transient society, especially in Du Page. Normally, the vacation destination was the water parks.” With suburban water parks so plentiful, many suburbanites won`t have to venture much farther than their own back yards to enjoy water games and sports, he said.
The Lisle pool bears a strong resemblance to Wheaton`s pool. There is a zero-depth edge that facilitates wading for children and disabled swimmers and there are two flume slides, each measuring 120 feet.
Unlike Wheaton`s water park, Lisle`s park has two free fall slides. Riders drop a total of 6 1/2 feet from the end of the slide into a 12-foot deep pool, said Hartman.
”I think we`re the only ones in the state,” that have this feature, Hartman said.
A second, smaller pool designed for children has its own small slide and waterfall. The park has three spa pools, which are akin to heated hot tubs, nestled on a redwood, adults-only deck adjacent to the pool.
”Most of our sunbathing area is turf rather than concrete,” Hartman said.
There is also a volleyball court, a children`s play area and a concession area. There are no diving boards because, Hartman said, ”No one used it. A very limited number of people used diving.”
A lack of enthusiasm on the part of the public motivated Addison park district officials to refurbish their aquatic park. The new, improved park opened June 9.
”Attendance had gone down steadily since we opened in 1976,” said park district director Bill Tookey. Last year, attendance averaged about 300 people per day, he said. This year, attendance is expected to average about 500 people daily.
A new children`s pool, three water slides and the expansion of the sun deck are some of the new features designed to attract bigger crowds, Tookey said. There is also a hot tub and a volleyball court. ”If there`s enough interest, we`ll put some sand volleyball courts in,” Tookey said. Another hot tub may eventually be added, he said, if there is sufficient demand.
The improvements were made at a cost of about $1.7 million, an expenditure that the park district plans to pay back during seven years, Tookey said.
Addison`s declining attendance was a phenomenon common to swimming pools across the country, according to Fuerst.
”Attendance was on a decline; revenue has been on a decline; the public pool did not meet the needs of today`s community,” Fuerst said.
The movement from traditional pools to water parks got its start in the Chicago area with the Bensenville Park District Water Park`s renovation four years ago, Fuerst said.
The Bensenville pool was the first to use the zero depth edge, an innovation that required a change in state law. Previously, state law dictated a minimum pool depth of 3.5 feet.
The pool also has a waterfall, a separate diving well, concrete animals that spout water and a 120-foot water slide, one of the most popular attractions at the park.
”We`ve had grandmothers go down the slide; we`ve had mothers go down the slide with their 8-month-old kid,” said Robert Kunkel, park district director. ”We have plans down the road to build other slides. We call it a water park rather than a pool. It has a zero depth. It`s like a beach. It`s great for small kids, moms and tots.”
There are also three diving boards, one three-meter and two one-meter, a sand playground area, a sand volleyball court and a grassy sunbathing hill.
Attendance has risen steadily at the Bensenville park. About 76,000 people enjoyed the park`s amenities during the opening season in 1985. Last year, Kunkel said, about 86,000 people visited the park.
The park was built to replace a traditional pool at a construction cost of about $2 million. Kunkel said the expense was well worth it.
Lombard was another Du Page town to follow Bensenville`s lead. For the last three seasons, improvements including a zero-depth pool, two flume slides and a refurbished bath house have been added to that town`s public park.
On the private enterprise front, the newly renovated Roaring Rapids park in Oakbrook Terrace offers swimmers ambitiously mammoth slide rides. The park, at the corner of Roosevelt Road and Ill. Hwy. 83, boasts two flume slides, each 700 feet long, said owner Stephen King.
There is also a surf hill, five lanes wide, for racers to competitively slide on mats along a 400-foot run. And, not for the faint-hearted, there is something called the Cannonball slide that takes riders through an underground slide before they splash down into a pool.
A new attraction added this year, King said, is miniature versions of all the rides, available for smaller swimmers.
King expects the park to be a popular summertime attraction. ”People are looking for more activities, things to do,” said King. ”The water park is an industry that`s booming right now.”
