Over the past several years, residents of North Bend and the Snoqualmie Valley have made their desire for an aquatics facility well known. In an effort to meet that need, Si View Metropolitan Parks District began an aquatics center feasibility study early this year.

Now that study is nearing completion.

The feasibility study detailing the projected construction of an aquatics facility in the district is expected to be finished in late August.

Public meetings were held in February and April to collect feedback on what residents of the parks district wanted to see in an aquatics facility. Hundreds of people attended the events, and even more submitted responses to an official online survey asking for feedback.

Minna Rudd, Si View’s recreation manager, said the district received more than 900 responses to the survey alone. Those outreach efforts, she said, were led by Patano Consulting who worked to collect information about what types of services are needed or asked for, and then used that data to form a feasibility plan.

With the information gathered from the meetings, the consultants created three possible options for a potential building to take. The Si View Metro Parks board ultimately chose the “middle-size” plan as its preferred option.

The preferred option, also known as option 2, would include a recreation pool, a six-lane competitive pool with spectator capacity for 80 people, deep water diving, play features for youth, and areas for water aerobics. The proposed concept also includes rentable space for private events and open recreation space for “dry” programming.

The minimum required site size for option 2 is 132,000 total square-feet. The site must provide space for a 46,000 square-foot building, 150 parking spaces at 60,000 square-feet, and 22,000 square-feet of open space.

Travis Stombaugh, executive director of Si View Metro Parks District, said the district is also looking at two potential locations that could fit the footprint required by the project.

“However, one is within our district boundaries and one is outside, but very close,” he said. “…Also we are going to be doing traffic studies at both sites.”

Discussions are underway with other organizations on potential partnerships to help bring the project to fruition once the feasibility study is complete.

The effort to work on an aquatics facility in the Si View Metro Parks district is also running parallel to the city of Snoqualmie’s similar effort to include aquatics services at the YMCA. Stombaugh said there have been some discussions with the city about avoiding duplicating services. Stombaugh also said the discussions with Snoqualmie have been about location and how it would operate.

“Those are the main discussions we’ve been having — if the city builds a pool for the YMCA (our facility) wouldn’t duplicate it, it would compliment it,” he said. “We want to try to maximize the resources in the Upper Valley. We don’t want to duplicate anything. The first priority would be try to see if we could come together with a mutual plan, (but) if that can’t happen let’s make sure we are on the same page with duplication and providing more services.”