Council favors option for Northside Splash Park water system, Downtown block improvements

By Cameron Montemayor

City leaders mulled options for a new splash park water system and signaled their support for various Downtown block improvements Wednesday.

Parks department officials are currently deep in the process of developing preliminary concepts for a Northside Splash Park at the same site as Krug Pool when it’s demolished. As part of that, city leaders used a work session Wednesday to decide whether a single-pass or a recirculated water system would be better fit for the upcoming aquatic facility.

“The big decision is the type of operating system that we have there,” said Chuck Kempf, director of Parks, Recreation and Civic Facilities.

P.J. Novick, a principal architect with Confluence, a leading architectural firm working on the park’s design, was asked to present information about the two systems. The firm has designed several splash parks throughout the Kansas City area among its extensive project experience. 

After weighing the pros the cons, council members signaled their support for the recirculated system, which operates like a traditional pool, where thousands of gallons of water are stored in a tank and repeatedly treated and refiltered.

“Spray heads, we’ll have a combined rate of about 50 gallons a minute,” Novick said. “Stream flow we have, we’re assuming about 200 gallons per minute that is going around that just to get some active water through there.” 

Council members were less enthusiastic about the second option, called a single-pass system, which requires a constant flow and tens of thousands of additional gallons of new water each day. 

While the system has grown to be a popular option for municipal aquatic facilities in the area, estimates show a single-pass system could cost $15,000 to $50,000 more per year to operate. Unlike a recirculated system, water from a single-pass system would also have to leave through the sewer system. 

Benefits with a single-pass system include increased guarantee of public safety from potential illness should the cleansing system and filters not be working correctly and less staff to manage it.   

A recirculated system was installed at the popular Liberty Oak Splash Pad at Hyde Park, though concerns have been raised about its holding tank and the need to decrease water pressure at times to accommodate overflows at the park. The recirculated plan favored today seeks to address those concerns by including a larger tank with 1,500 to 2,000 gallons of additional water storage. 

Officials are designing the Northside Splash Park to look significantly different from the facility at Hyde Park. The Northside park, which is set to open in spring of 2026, will feature a nature-based theme to mirror Krug Park. Components include water sprays emitting from boulders and a four- to six-foot-wide shallow stream flow across the splash pad site, one of many proposed features city leaders are enthusiastic about.

“I think the design is very welcoming to people to come in and use it. We want to make sure that it’s available all the time. That’s always been one of the issues that we’ve had, so we’re excited about some of the things that are coming to Krug Park,” Mayor John Josendale said.

Splash park designs weren’t the only topic of discussion at Wednesday’s work session, where downtown and Main Street officials also presented their plan for widespread improvements along a two-block downtown area adjacent to the InspireU children’s discovery museum.

City council members voiced their support for allocating up to $85,000 for enhancements to various properties along Felix Street.

“It’s just the beginning of all the work that we want to do over the next 5 to 10 years. And I think it’s just going to put the best face on downtown for, you know, this one opportunity to really shine when the InspireU opens up in December sometime,” said Jim Kieffer with Main Street St. Joseph.

The city initially allocated $2.5 million as part of an agreement with Mosaic Life Care and its foundation to go toward the museum’s development, $1.5 million was directed specifically for downtown block improvements.