The plans to build a proposed Aquatic Center at Lewis Park will decimate the existing fields, reducing quantity, size, and flexibility of this park. Addition of asphalt for parking and rooftops for the indoor pool and peripheral buildings, lazy river, slides and other features, will have detrimental impact on the areas ability to mitigate stormwater. Increased traffic will negatively impact the walkability and safety of the residential neighborhood. This proposed Aquatic Center will cost from $61- $107 Million dollars, which will be presented in the bond issue to be voted on in March of 2026.
Please support us in asking the City Council, Parks Department, and Mayor to find another location for this planned project rather than destroying this multipurpose, central, essential, neighborhood park. Logic would dictate maintaining Lewis Park over trying to replace what would be lost.
One comment
The City should move it over to Underwood Park on Deane Solomon. The school district owns over 100 acres adjacent to the City’s land. If the City needs more land to accommodate the aquatic center, maybe they should make a deal with their back room buddies over at the school district and acquire more acreage. It would have interstate access and visibility, and it’s only 2.2 miles from the Lewis Park location. It seems like a no-brainer to me. Of course, the bigger issue is that the $60 million is only for phase 1, and our city leaders, including Mayor Molly Rawn, can’t tell the citizens how the City plans to pay for the aquatic center’s ANNUAL operational DEFICIT or how much that deficit is expected to be. (I’ve seen numbers from a former city council person projected to be as high as $750,000 per year) Fayetteville isn’t flush with cash, and we have more urgent needs like water and sewer infrastructure upgrades and long overdue and much needed street improvements (for CARS, not bikes). I would LOVE to have an aquatic center for our city, but for decades our city leaders have failed to prioritize the important things, and now we have failing infrastructure everywhere we turn in Fayetteville. Until we can bring all of our water, sewer, and traffic infrastructure into the modern era, extras will have to wait.