Warning: Take your kids to the pool at the new Campus for Jewish Life in Palo Alto, and you just may have a hard time getting them home.
No, the pool won’t be full of quicksand. But what it will have is a kind of jungle gym in the water, like a mini-Marine World. There will be waterslides and water-shooting cannons and, for example, cowboy hat- and gumdrop-shaped fountains and all kinds of other fun stuff to do.
In other words, forget about doing laps.
“This is going to be like a giant magnet, bringing people to the J.,” said Randy Popp, a senior project manager at the San Jose-based Steinberg Architects. The firm is working on the new Campus for Jewish Life, which is being called “the J.” for short (and is not related to this newspaper). The campus is slated to open in 2008, along with the pool.
The aquatic play area is being designed by the Carlsbad-based Aquatic Design Group, which is, according to Popp, a leader in the field of pool design. Pools of all different shapes and sizes is what they do, and they have designed some of the Six Flags theme parks.
But the idea belongs to Alan Sataloff, the CEO of the Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center, who brought it with him from Richmond, Va.
Since Sataloff oversaw a major renovation to the JCC where he worked previously, he visited other community centers around the country to get ideas.
“I visited a center in Colorado and the play pool was packed and the outdoor lap pool was empty. This is what kids want, they don’t want to swim laps, they want to play,” said Sataloff.
When he brought the idea to his board, though, they were not so excited — at first. “No one could figure it out,” he said. “But I said, ‘you have to see what this looks like.'”
Sure enough, the pictures were convincing. They built it, and as soon as it opened, it too, was packed.
The play area will be in shallow water, with what’s called a “beach entry,” meaning that the water will go from zero to knee-deep. Parents can take their babies to play at the water’s edge.
The whole park will be indoors in a controlled-temperature environment, so parents don’t have to worry about their children being overexposed to the sun. And there will be a room adjacent that can be rented out for birthday parties and other events.
Popp said that when he took his own three children to a facility like it, “I couldn’t get them out of there.”
There will also be a teaching pool adjacent to it, with zones of different depths, and an outside water playground for those who don’t want to be submerged in water at all.
Using a new technique of aquatic design called a “zero depth pool,” the playground allows children to play on an outdoor jungle gym with falling water on a slip-proof rubber surface that does not allow the water to collect. Popp compared it to a new-and-improved version of running through the sprinklers.
For the adults, there will be a 25-foot swimming pool with six lanes, and a therapy pool as well.
“It’s important to design one really well because it attracts a wide age-range,” said Popp. “And for a JCC, that’s what you’re looking for. Every space at a JCC needs to be adaptable, and usable for a wide range of users.”