Stream of visitors shows Dallas is wise to invest in its water park

Pool season ended in September, but we welcome a splash of good news anytime. And how’s this for a headline? Dallas has started work to replace a 20-year-old water feature at the popular Bahama Beach Waterpark in Red Bird — with the expectation that the new amenities will be ready by summer 2026.

As our newsroom colleague María Ramos Pacheco reported earlier this year, the $2.5 million upgrade for the water park is coming from a federal Community Development Block Grant and from the city’s Parkland Dedication Program Fund.

This water park is exactly the kind of aquatic facility that Dallas should be investing in. City Hall faced resistance this year over the closure of several community pools, but as we’ve written previously, those facilities’ days were numbered. With sparse attendance and with parts dating back decades and no economical replacements, to keep those pools open was to pour taxpayer money down the drain.

Today, communities across North Texas gravitate toward “spraygrounds,” aquatic centers and waterparks, which are larger facilities that combine pools with amenities such as lazy rivers, tubes and tall slides.

Bahama Beach Waterpark opened to much fanfare in 2005, and it remains a crowd favorite to this day. Annual attendance was 50,000 a decade ago and has risen to 76,000, Park and Recreation Director John Jenkins told us. The water park is also one of the city’s most cost-effective aquatic facilities. Bahama Beach, which charges a modest admission fee and also receives rental income, generates about $1.3 million in annual revenue and recovers 70% of its costs.

The latest upgrade will replace Coconut Grove, a playground styled like a water fortress featuring slides, pulleys and water buckets. It will be replaced by a bigger installation including 16 decks, more than 55 water features and new slides. It will also bring back the huge water-dumping bucket that is as much a hit with adults as it is with children.

This upgrade follows a more substantial overhaul in 2021, when the city invested $5.9 million to create an area dedicated to families with small children, including new restrooms.

“This is what folks want,” Jenkins said. “They want to have this type of amenity in their communities.”

The water park isn’t just for kids and their parents. Summer programming includes water aerobics classes for seniors.

Jenkins told us that the city has contracted with a company to seek corporate sponsorship opportunities for the park system, not including Fair Park and city parks with separate management. The park director said the city wants to keep fees affordable for families and is looking to sponsorships to generate more revenue and cover its costs at Bahama Beach.

Dallas residents vote with their feet, and they love their water park. City Hall is wise to keep its sole water park in great shape and to recognize that a commitment to Bahama Beach is a much-needed investment in southern Dallas.