A project long-discussed in a suburban Wichita community is progressing toward reality. Work on the over 40,000 square-foot Valley Center Recreation and Aquatics Center began in August and is set to wrap by the close of 2024. Valley Center city administrator Brent Clark called the project “transformational” for the city just north of Wichita. “We have a town of nearly 7,500 people, but we also have over 750 residential lots coming online,” he said. “When we’re attracting residents and new homeowners, they look for quality-of-life amenities.” It was not a quick journey to get to this point. Clark said the community had been talking about the center since the early 2000s, but the city failed multiple times in getting a sales tax increase passed that would help fund the effort. Fast-forward to early in the Covid-19 pandemic, when Valley Center made the decision to temporarily shut down its large outdoor pool. That got some in the community fired up, and Clark said that energy was able to be turned into a case for revisiting the recreation and aquatic center as a long-term benefit for the city’s well-being.
Source: Wichita Business Journal
