Good evening. Welcome to this Brownsburg town working session. Today, our meeting will focus on the design aspect of the Brownsburg Aquatic Center Project.
We appreciate everyone's presence this evening, and participation in this matter tonight is important.
The event is going to start with a presentation by Williams Architect. They are a consultant.
After the presentation, there will be a Q&A session where you can ask questions. If you'd like to ask a question publicly, please add your name to a sign-up sheet at the back of the room.
Each speaker will be given three minutes to speak and introduce a topic, a new topic for discussion.
And finally, there will be a breakout session so that you can provide feedback on designs for the aquatic center.
So once we get through the presentation, you get your questions asked, we will answer those questions,
then there'll be a further breakout session where we'll go to the side boost here to talk to each person individually.
At the start of the meeting, you were given a comment card.
If you must leave before the meeting concludes,
please fill out the card and hand it back to one of our staff members.
Your feedback will be used to create an online Frequently Asked Questions section
addressing any questions or concerns you may have expressed.
If you're watching from home, you can leave us a comment online
at brownsburg.org forward slash aquatic center.
Now, Williams Architects is ready if you want to come up here
and begin your presentation.
Is the microphone working?
All right. So I'm going to just jump right in.
I will let the, sorry, before you get started there, I'll make one further announcement too while we're doing this and for the folks online.
We're going to be having two additional public input sessions for the Aquatic Center.
Those dates will be November 2, which is two weeks from today.
And the next meeting will be November 14, which is almost a month from today.
It's four weeks from today, minus a day.
It'll be that Wednesday, the 14th.
And then we will have the meeting start times and all that information post online when we finalize the starting times.
But those will be the dates.
All right.
Sorry, Ted, go ahead.
All right.
Today, for the Aquatic Center, we're going to be sharing information about the building program.
And then I'm going to share a high level site plan that kind of puts the site in context.
and then we'll look at main and upper level plans of the building. George will
jump in at that point and talk in a little more detail about the poor bodies
themselves and then I'll share the exterior renderings of the building.
We'll touch on what the budget is expected to be and then we'll answer
questions after that.
First, so this is a written description of what's
included in the building itself.
Big picture, it's about 24,000 square feet, slightly less.
The largest component is obviously
the indoor aquatics portion of the building
at about 7,000 square feet.
And then we have support facilities,
locker areas, changing rooms, et cetera.
Customer service aspects of the building are next.
And then we do have some multi-use rooms.
I'll talk about that in more detail
when I share the plans.
And then obviously the support spaces
that are needed to run the building.
You'll see a component on this program.
It's called Parks and Rec Administration.
That's called out as zero right now.
During the original RFP for the project,
it was anticipated that the building might have
Parks and Rec staff offices in it,
but we've made the decision to remove them from the program at this point in favor of
including additional multi-use rooms for the community.
And then the last chunk of the space is the common space, which would include the lobby
area, toilet support, et cetera, and then an observation mezzanine that I'll show
you on the plan, and then some miscellaneous square footage that's kind of built in
the plan.
This is a big picture view of the chunk of the site that we're using off of
West Main Street for the building. You can see at the bottom there is the building itself
in the pool. It shows that we're including approximately at this point 160 total parking
stalls, but according to the zoning requirements, we need the land bank additional space for
parking stalls. So that's kind of the green space between Main Street and then the parking
lot you see there. And then off to the side is a potential future parking area. We just
sketched that in because it was part of the kind of the overall master plan that
we had access to.
Next, so now I'm going to jump in. This is the main level plan itself.
You can see at the front of the building is the main entry to the building is here.
It enters into a public lobby space that kind of is controlled and monitored by this desk
right here which would be the admissions desk for the entire pool area. There's
that you enter here into a common locker space area
and the direction we went with this in lieu of
like men's and women's locker rooms
are 14 unisex changing rooms.
I think it results in probably a little less square footage
dedicated to that kind of that overall area
plus it increases functionality I would say.
kind of an ancillary benefit to it is the lockers end up being out in the public spaces,
which mean then you can be, those can be covered by cameras if you choose. It's kind of a way
to help prevent theft. So those areas are here. Let me get my cursor. That's this area here.
All of these, each of these little rooms here is a changing area. It's toilet, shower,
sink combination blockers in this area here and then we call it a groom and
counter shared countertop space. So from this area you can enter the indoor
nadatorium at this point. During during the summer season when the outdoor pool
is open you'd go down this hallway here and you'd enter the outdoor pool
environment kind of through this vestibule. So adjacent to the outdoor pool on the building
side of things is the one multi, we call it a multi-use room. It's intended to be focused
on rental for birthday parties and things like that. The program also includes a concessions
area right here. The intent behind that, the way it's laid out right now is we have
a service window. We call it behind the fence of the pool so we could serve the pool area
but since the building is part of the bigger master plan for the whole park we did want
to allow for the opportunity for the concessions to be open while the outdoor pool is closed.
So we have made two service windows for that concessions right now. This here is a building
mechanical space.
This is a slight difference from the early iterations of the plan and it was
all done on the interest of saving money based on information from our mechanical engineers
on that project. Behind the outdoor or behind the indoor pool at the back of the building is
the pool mechanical room and that would serve both the indoor pool and the outdoor pool.
So, the outdoor pool, deck space around the activity pool with a zero entry edge, and
then we call this the Lazy River area here, like a current channel type of the thing.
Seating around kind of the perimeter of the paved area, some canopies for shade in this
area and then an area of turf right there. This here at the back is the, is a water slide.
So two water slides actually, what do we call them? Those are the run-out slides, run-out
slides, two run-out slides. So they, the intent there is you'd, instead of those slides
going into the pool itself, you'd run out and slow down. That's what these lengths
here are there. I'm going to jump quick to the upper level and then come back to
this one. So this is the upper level of the building, open to below at the public
lobby space in front and then the indoor and auditorium at the back. This is
the space that was originally intended for Parks and Rec office space but
instead during design we've changed it to two multi-use rooms each at about 800 square feet
and those on the pool side they front like cursor go they they kind of the doors are off that
observation deck and the intent behind that is a glass wall that separates that space from the
pool below but that would be the spot where parents would be able to see into the pool
while kids are in swim lessons, things like that.
And then the last component on the upper level
is this outdoor terrace on the right side of the plan.
Right here.
I think that covers generally the building plan.
I'm gonna let Jor, too early, too early.
Back to my,
yeah, get back to my plan.
Sorry.
Go.
Hey, good evening.
So the one thing we wanted to talk about
was really just the vision behind, including the bodies of water that we did. We wanted
to be very intentional about providing opportunities for the entire community. And so at the outset
that really went toward having indoor and outdoor water. Anytime we do outdoor aquatics
only the question inevitably arises well that's that's great for 80 to 85 days
out of the year but what about what about the rest of the year and so having
this layout with the two bodies of water they really complement each other in
terms of being able to offer the community aquatic opportunities on a
year-round basis you know starting with the outdoor pool anytime we design
an outdoor aquatic area we always want to have capacity we want to have
thrill attractions and we want to have children's areas and those are the three
main things that we want to incorporate into any design for outdoor
aquatics and so with this plan we have all three of those we have the lazy river
and you know shallow area as our capacity holder we have the water
slides as the thrill attraction and then we also have the large zero depth
entry with the different vertical sprays and plays for the children and
And so we can really encompass something that will accommodate families together on the outdoor
side and then complement that, you know, that water can also serve as programmable water
in the summertime.
You can run swim lessons out there.
You can do resistance walking in the Lazy River before it opens to the public in
the morning.
And then on the indoor side, we really looked at, you know, A, that since the high school
does have the 50 meter facility that we don't need this to be a large competitive venue but
we wanted to incorporate some lap lanes for fitness swimming and then those can also double
as good space for swimming lessons and water fitness classes but then also complement that
with a zero depth entry again inside that we can have year round recreation for families
and so specifically with the indoor side you know three lap lanes doesn't seem like a lot
but that area can encompass, you know, six to nine lap swimmers at any given time.
If you ran swim lessons at both ends, you could fit 24 to 30 kids just in that three-lane lap area
in the morning and evening time every 40 to 45 minutes.
If you're having a water fitness class, you know, you could have close to 30 people in that area,
and so it can really accommodate a lot of different functions,
A lot of the indoor recreational pools that we end up designing do have that minimum of
three lap lanes just because it is such a versatile space and body of water.
And then on the zero depth entry side, that's a great way to incorporate some ground sprays
to have the younger kids in swimming lessons.
So right here at the base of the zero depth entry, right here where we're getting
down to that three foot.
So we have you know some two and a half feet along this wall that we could run swimming lessons this way
We'd have a three-foot area right here that we could run swimming lessons that way
And so it is a great area functionally speaking where you could still have you know
Swimming lessons going on in that shallow area, but then have lap swimming or water fitness going on in the lap
Lane so we wanted to try to make sure that we had the proper spaces indoors to accommodate
You know different types of aquatic programs all throughout the year
Namna
move to the exterior of the building, some images that we want to share.
Right now, as far as the overall process, we just finished what we call schematic design.
Which is the first design phase of the project. We finished that about three weeks ago.
Technology nowadays lets you make photo realistic images of something that is at the very beginning of the design process.
But I wanted to share images that we find attractive for this whole facility.
Go back to the front. This is having
trouble controlling my,
going to use the old way.
There
we go. So this is the front of the facility that behind the two story glass
wall that you see there that's the main lobby space for the building. This is
facing you know north approximately north and it faces that parking lot
that's out in front of the building. Over here on the left side here these
are these are where those concession windows would be and then these
This would be the stair up to that outdoor terrace on the second level.
This is the side of the building, the side opposite the building of the pool area.
Material-wise, we're trying to work with a couple of different materials.
The gray panels, that's a smooth metal panel, the darker gray, that's a corrugated metal
panel.
and then that masonry in the middle is kind of an Indiana limestone color of masonry.
As part of this, like I said, we're just leaving schematic design, one of the efforts we've
been going through with the committee is reducing the amount of glass to a level that is acceptable.
This is a view of the pool side of the building.
we're standing on the concessions deck.
One of the things you might notice in here is the concessions deck is fenced off from
the pool itself.
The intention behind that is, again, because the building is part of the bigger park, theoretically
you'd be able to use the concession deck even when the outdoor pool is closed.
bird's eye view of the entire facility.
Any comments on that George?
One of the
things I think this is a good slide to use to talk a little bit about some of
the organization that one of the reasons why the the plan is organized the way
it is is because we wanted to reserve space kind of toward the bottom of the
plan that would be a potential future location for deeper water you obviously
don't need to make that decision now but you know if the outdoor pool wanted in
addition it would happen kind of in that area and then you can see behind
the building the trees over there that's part of the park but the master
plan did anticipate at some point possibly doing an addition onto this
building so that would be the side we would add on.
So another view of the indoor or the outdoor
pool area, this area, kind of this area right here in particular, that's the lifeguards and pool
managers portion of the building. The intention behind that is both the manager and the lifeguards,
is they need good visibility of the entire outdoor pool area.
So that's why they're kind of on this corner.
So they get that visibility.
Something else you might notice
is the outdoor pool is a few feet lower
than the indoor pool as far as where the floor level
would be at.
That was done intentionally because of the site.
it's if you've been out there the site kind of crowns right underneath the
existing site crowns kind of right underneath where our building is so
we're trying to minimum or reduce costs from a grading side of things to fit
within our budget.
Another view of the pool that you can see some of the play
features that we're starting to show at the zero entry edge of the activity pool, those
features haven't really been selected at this point. We're still kind of working through
that. That's the next step of the process. But we wanted to show you some examples
of the types of features that would be in that water.
Next, I'll just touch briefly
Especially on the budget for the project, during the RFP the budget was set at $18 million.
We've been tracking it kind of through the overall design process and as we've made adjustments
to the plans during that process, the numbers are starting to are tracking just slightly
lower according to this early budgeting of $48,000 less than we were at the beginning
of the process.
Thank you Ted. Megan, do you have a list of everyone who's great? Thank you.
All right, so we're going to begin the Q&A session by calling out the names of the participants who signed up in order of their registration.
As a reminder, each speaker has a maximum of three minutes to share their thoughts and ideas on a new topic of discussion related to the project's design.
Your valuable feedback is essentially making this project a success.
After the Q&A, we'll answer all the questions and then move into breakout session to gather more feedback.
Megan, I believe you're going to be capturing all the questions and then George and Ted will be answering those.
All right, great.
We have three names tonight.
The first one will be Clayton McCrindle.
Good
evening, everyone. Thanks for the time. First, counselors, I want to say thank you
for setting up the two additional informational sessions. That was a request we had at the
council meeting, and I appreciate that you heard us and listened to that request.
I'll start out by saying not sure why we're only talking about the design. It sounds
like this is a done deal. That's a tough one for a taxpayer to just take on the
chin. The location, I'm really concerned about that in relation to the water table,
how close it is to the creek, how close it is to the sewage plant. So I want to understand
that part of it. As far as the budget goes, we have 18 million in our budget for 2024.
The first slide shown showed 23 million, and then there was a 17 point something million
at the end. So pretty confused about those numbers and where this is going to end up,
especially when Plainfield's Aquatic Center costs $25 million.
So, really interested to hear how we're going to keep those costs in check,
especially when we're all taking a 5% tax increase on the chin, too.
Next one, we struggled to keep the splash pad open all summer.
How are we going to keep a pool open all year?
And then we got recurring costs from this.
There's currently a shortage of lifeguards.
I don't know how many of this requires, but we can't even keep the
Brownsburg editorial room open for the public because we can't staff it with
lifeguards so I'm interested to know how we're going to get those lifeguards and
then the last question I have is just what does this do to our town's liability
insurance I don't know where that where that comes from someone's going to get
hurt here someone's going to sue the town how are we planning to cover that
that's my time thank you
Ron Matthews
so when we do a cost analysis of
everything, what it's going to cost the town. Are we looking at the return on
investment as well? So let's say you, it costs us $300,000 to run this every year.
Are we looking at just the membership fees we're getting back? Because I
actually talked to several local places, I called up and talked to Carmel,
And they had told me that all their businesses substantially amount of
increase during the time that they have people coming into their community.
There's a lot of intangible items that this will bring to our community.
I talked to a couple places in Splash Island, I mean not Splash Island,
in Lebanon and other surrounding places that have Aquatic Center the whole town
benefits. When I talked to Mayor Myers I believe is what his name was he told me
that he believes that when they added Freedom Springs it was a really big
boost to Greenwood it helped there it pushed their Center Grove didn't need
but it pushed property values as well. Everybody knows just like you said you
push property values up. Town council gets a little bit more money coming back
into town on our taxes so the higher the property values are the better return
you're going to get. So I I would encourage everyone to look into not
only what it costs to run but also reach out to every community because
Is everybody saying what's this going to cost, what's this going to cost?
When Freedom Springs did their analysis back in 2015, they were told they were going to
lose $200,000 a year.
They made $300,000.
So even the experts don't know.
They were off by half a million dollars.
That's a pretty big swing.
In black and white you can check with Indie Star.
They did a page on it.
That's where I got my information on it.
And then Chris, I wanted to tell you that I'm in your ward
and I talk to all our neighbors and they want this.
We don't have the luxury of having an HOA with a pool.
I know some of the council members might
or incoming may have, you know, into HOAs
and things like that, but you do have to take
effective all of Brownsburg even some that that don't want it but and I can't I
haven't seen any reliable statistic from the parts department over two or three
years that came back negative thank you and our last speaker tonight the one
good evening council members members of the audience members watching on the
web this
really boils down to a pretty simple question will the community
commit $18 million to fund this quality of life amenity available for all
residents use? Yes or no?
All issues beyond that are subordinate to that
question. You will either do this or you will not. Now that oversimplifies things
but you know there's a common sense logic and reason would say if there's a
will, there's a way. This can be done. Now, I have a public face and I have a private
face. My private face, I have been working to collaborate with the detractors and the
supporters of this project.
So we've heard that, you know, this is going to be a tax
increase and we're going to have a 5% levy. This is a 5% levy increase, not a tax increase
by the way. But the money is already in the budget now because they're paying
for Town Hall. When that bond rolls off, we have the monies readily available. It certainly
could be directed to some other use, but we could make a decision to direct them to this
purpose.
So what does that cost an average taxpayer? $51 a year. What does that cost
over the life of the bond? $1,100 a year. That's really what we're asking the community
is, do you want to spend this money for this amenity? Now if the answer is no,
I have to question when, because some of you have been in the room long enough to know that we've made three attempts at this.
We were told in the past, oh, just wait for 3% growth. We'll get that money and we'll be able to do that then.
Now, certainly that's on the way, but Town Center was one of those big things.
As that money comes in, are we going to revisit this again, or is the answer always going to be no?
And if the answers already know, well then, okay, that's fine, but that kind of goes to the first postulate.
We will either do this or not.
But it's in the context of what? Population will continue to increase.
Assessed value will continue to increase.
As a result, this investment of $18 million will grow smaller of a population of our current worth over time.
As will that expense for the budget
Total budget. That expense will also decrease as a portion of our operating expense over time.
So we can't look at this just from today's window. We can also look at this one, three, five, seven, ten, and so far out.
But do we do this amenity now?
And that's the question before you as public servants and decision makers.
And that's the question before our public that's in the room and those are asking on the web.
I don't have an answer for that.
I mean, I have a personal answer, but I'm just trying to advocate for the media and to say,
are we working through this and get to the right solution?
Thank you for your time.
All right. Thank you for our speakers tonight.
Megan, did you get all the response?
I know some were more statements than there were questions, but there were a few questions in there.
Some were probably for William.
Some were maybe for us.
We probably don't have all those questions to be answered today.
We'll get through what we can.
Sean or Debbie, you might have some answers to those questions.
George and Teneffy want to go back to the podium.
I guess we can take these one by one.
The first question is, how close is it to the sewage plant and the water table?
Sean, that might be more of a question for you.
It's it's not in the back yard. It's I can't tell you the exact fee we can get that out in the FAQ, but it is near
adjacent
There's homes way closer to the pool or to the sanitary plant than this and with that note
We've also had people from all over the country come to our plant
To investigate why and how we operate
Because we have minimal odors that do
Come out of our plant
So we can get the exact distance in the FAQ, the water table, I could probably take that one.
It is near the flood plain and is not in the flood plain.
Our consultant can probably help with the exact depth, but it should be well above the water table.
We should be getting soil borings shortly.
Yes.
The next, I'm sorry, the next question is there seems to be a confusion between a slide
that said 25 million and one that said 18.
Can you expand upon the difference?
23 million and the last one was 17.9.
I don't remember the 23 million on the slide.
That was square footage.
Was that square footage?
Well, there's 20, yeah, it was 24,000 square feet of building.
Can you pull that up just to make sure we can so
here's the
There's the budget right 17.99 from the RFP we our target was 18 million dollars
So that's where that's where this number came from. Can you go to the very first line? Yeah, I
think
Maybe it was this slide.
I think that 23770 is probably what he was talking about.
That was square footage.
Yeah, this is square footage of the building.
Next.
The next question is, we struggled to keep the splash pad open all summer.
How will the pool remain open?
Yeah, that's a good question.
And we've had discussions with that ourselves as a council.
And there are some major issues when the splash pad was built that we have concerns over.
And we're trying to figure out not only was it splash pad being built, but we're trying
to determine too if there was any errors in the winterization of that property, and that
could have been done by whether our staff or by the people that we employ to do that
for us.
We're trying to figure that out.
And if it wasn't our staff, then hopefully we can have some restitution for that
project.
But I don't know, Amber or Sean, if one of you
want to get some further clarification to the splash pad.
I think also it'll be important that some of the documents
that we would get from this project
would include close-out lists on an asset replacement plan
so that we can get ahead of pumps and things that
need to be replaced and get them in the budget year
on year and replace them ahead of the time.
So not waiting for something to break,
but actually budgeting appropriately. And when we hopefully redo the splash pad, that
is something that I know I've talked to with Sean about implementing for the splash pad
so we can get our maintenance a little bit ahead of the game instead of waiting for things
to break.
And that's one of the things when we put in these future public input sessions is
when we have the, what the performer looks like in the ROI on it, we just don't have
it yet. I know the team here at TED and George are working on it. And that's
One thing that's good to point out is make sure we have maintenance included in that.
I'm sure you probably do.
Okay.
I'd like to add that you can correct me if I'm wrong, Amber, but the splash pad is nearing
or beyond some of its expected life, some of those items.
So we did budget quite a bit of money to reconstruct in 24.
Thank you.
All right.
Next question.
The next question was regarding the shortage of lifeguards.
How will we get lifeguards?
I will read that to someone who's more an expert than I am.
So I know that Council has talked about this,
and we've talked about this internally with HR,
that we are looking to possible third-party consultants
to help with hiring lifeguards.
And then, of course, as always, we have, you know, teens, people out of school.
I think there's a lot of folks looking for jobs.
So we would just come up with a plan, a recruitment plan,
whether that be a third party or us hiring or a mix.
It could possibly be a mix.
But again, that's something that in our business plan we will be assessing out.
The liability insurance for the town of Brownsburg.
how do we plan to cover any increases?
Yeah, but we talked to Rick about that.
Yeah, this has been discussed and it would be added just as any program is added as it comes online.
And as other programs might change or roll off that those are included, you know, as are all our assets.
So, yeah, we have to figure out the scope and the size and everything before we get an accurate amount.
Host of analysis, are we looking at the ROI?
Yes.
We don't have it yet, but that is one of the very first things that we've spoken about,
is make sure we have a good return on investment for this project.
Including we're looking at membership fees, just to answer that.
That was in the next question, are we looking at membership fees?
Yes, we are.
As well as in-town and out-of-town resident rates.
What is the cost to the average taxpayer for a facility like this?
I'll tell my head I don't know until we dive into that and see the final numbers.
We do the ROI and everything like that too.
The other ones were questions, but I think they were more statements like,
Is the community going to commit to this and are they going to commit now?
Well, I mean, I wouldn't say this is a done deal by any stretch of imagination.
That's why we're doing these public input sessions.
See if the public wants it.
I think one of the biggest questions that I get asked and I think other counselors get asked is,
what are we going to bring forward for the community?
Whether it be a pool or some kind of amenities and activities for the community outside of what we've provided.
Provided and I think us as a council said have said numerous times like we can't afford it right now
And that's the reason we're doing all the the bidding of the commercial growth that we've had in our community the last three or four years
right a point now where
someone brought up that the bonding on this
Building is going to be falling off, which is very true as well as the three percent growth that we've seen
Brownsburg's in a better spot financially than
than we've ever been
This is at least my eight or nine years involved here.
That's the end of your questions.
All right. Thank you.
So now what we're going to do is we're going to have a breakout session.
So let's try to split this up as evenly as possible.
Have the room go over here, have the room over here.
And I really think we're about even if you take a look at the room.
So just have the side of this side, this half over here.
At the beginning of the meeting, we're giving a comment card.
If you leave tonight, can you please felt that comment card handed one of the staff
as you leave?
Your feedback will be collected and provided in an online document.
So we are taking that seriously, all the comments and requests that we get and questions
that we get.
So we'll try to answer all those as best of our ability.
And that's what we're going to do also at these stations is to kind of have a
question and answer session.
Yeah, let's go ahead and do that.
We'll have council members at each one, as well as staff at each side as well.
Do you guys want to head on that side? I'll grab this over here.