Midco Aquatic Center proves city’s demand for indoor aquatics

About 80,000 people.

That’s how many people consultants projected would use an indoor aquatic center back when the city was considering one nearly a decade ago.

It wasn’t even close.

“Throw out the COVID year, and we’ve been over 200,000 essentially every year,” Don Kearney, director of the Sioux Falls Parks & Recreation Department, said of usage at the Midco Aquatic Center. “So it’s gone really well.”

Other questions also have been cleared up. Like, would anyone use an indoor pool during the summer?

“We hit capacity in the summer (at the Midco),” Kearney said.

“A lot of the arguments were nobody wants to swim inside during the summer, and we proved that wrong. There was even a 25 percent drop in outdoor pool attendance during the summer after the Midco opened. The thing we look at is usable days. We have 360 days versus maybe 75 depending on which pool it is, and we’re open a lot more hours during the day. We open at 5:30 a.m., and on most days we’re open until 8 p.m.”

The city’s only indoor aquatic center marks six years this month, and it has been successful enough that the city is open to considering another indoor facility as it moves through an aquatics planning process that will result in multiple replacement pools.

“Basically, the way I describe it is if school is not in session, this place is really, really busy,” Kearney said. “So evenings, weekends, holidays, anytime, the place is really busy.”

Add in a special event, like the annual Easter egg hunt, and the pool essentially is packed shoulder to shoulder.

“It’s very busy. Always,” said Jennifer Kirby, who is helping lead the planning process for future pools and is a competitive swimmer herself. “I’ll be interested in learning more about the public input on the topic, but I think with all the demands on the pool — and a lot of demands happen after school and into the events — that’s when all the kids are available, and to be able to spread out demand with another facility would be beneficial.”

Both Kearney and Kirby point to a number of adults who also use the Midco Aquatic Center for fitness and rehabilitation.

“And it’s the only way they can exercise is in water because they’ve had health challenges with joint, arthritis … and they cannot afford some of the other options in town, so the Midco truly is a key piece of their quality of life,” Kirby said. “It’s super important not only to lap swimmers and teams and kids taking lessons and recreating but people with challenging health issues.”

While special events are a draw for kids and families, the city is putting a greater emphasis on adult fitness too, Kearney said.

“We’re doing more with hydro-riders, bikes in the pool, boga, which is yoga on boards, so we’re trying to do more for fitness, and we’re seeing good usage that way, as well as people who come in to use the warm-water pool and lazy river to water walk. It’s just really popular.”

The city expects to hold its next sessions in aquatics planning in early November, which will include presenting options for each of the pool sites under consideration along with potential site plans.

“There’s strong interest in either a multifaceted recreation center that would serve all demographics, and there’s still strong interest in outdoor facilities,” Kearney said. “We’ll come up with a couple options … but there’s a lot of emphasis on year-round use.”

To illustrate why, Kirby points to a woman she met in the Midco locker room and talked with about how they enjoy coming to the pool.

“She looked at me and said, ‘It’s a lot better than antidepressants.’ And in this day and age, it’s a great point,” she said. “People value it for a lot of reasons.”