Aug. 21–A proposed $25 million development of a water park, hotel and restaurant continued to sail through the approval process on Tuesday as the Garden City Commission approved a variety of agreements for the project.
Following two public hearings, the commission approved the creation of a tax increment financing district, a community improvement district and the project plan for Stone Development Inc., the legal entity developing a water park, hotel and Old Chicago restaurant south of Menards near the bypass and Schulman Avenue intersection.
Korb Maxwell, attorney with Kansas City-based firm Polsinelli, which represents Stone Development, said he was struggling to figure out what his third act will be.
“I just don’t know if I can keep doing $25 million projects every two weeks in Garden City,” Maxwell said, referring to another $25 million project Polsinelli is involved in, the second phase of the Schulman Crossing retail development north of Menards.
Located at the former Fun Center property, the development, initiated by hotelier Amro Samy, includes a 22,000 square feet indoor water park, a 96-room hotel and a 7,000 square-feet restaurant. Several weeks ago, Old Chicago was named as the restaurant.
The TIF allows increased property taxes generated by the improved property to be used to finance construction of infrastructure for the project, and the CID allows an additional 1 percent sales tax to be levied on customers within the new development and on sales at the Sleep Inn and Clarion Inn, both Samy-owned properties.
Financing of the water park will also use transient guest taxes collected from the new hotel and the Sleep Inn.
“It’s darn exciting,” Maxwell said. “Samy’s to be commended for his vision and entrepreneurial spirit, and the community and city is to be commended for bringing out people who want to make these kinds of investments and creating the atmosphere to do it.”
Maxwell explained that the TIF will be used for qualifying “horizontal” infrastructure costs like roads, streets and water and sewer. the CID funds, which can be collected for up to 22 years, goes toward “vertical” costs such as building construction.
“We really threw the kitchen sink at the CID,” Maxwell said. “In theory, we’re using the TIF to sort of clear the ground, get the Fun Center out of there, get the public infrastructure ready. The CID is being used along with the transient guest tax to actually pay a portion of that capital cost of the facility.”
Mayor Dan Fankhauser stressed that the CID is a tax paid by customers of the water park, hotels and restaurant. The city is not giving a portion of its sales tax collections to the project.
“This is an additional tax that we are asking the city to place on us,” Maxwell said.
Ken Carmichael, the project architect, said the fourstory hotel will have 96 beds; the Old Chicago restaurant will probably seat about 250 people and will include an outdoor dining area that will seat between 15 and 30 people; and the water park will be roughly 25,000 square feet including about 10,000 square feet of water surface area.
“We spent quite a bit of time this morning trying to decide which features we want. We’ll have some swirl tubes inside, some lazy rivers and so on,” he said.
Carmichael said some dirt work has begun, and developers are pushing hard to complete and open the restaurant by the end of the year. The hotel will follow that, and it is hoped construction of the water park will begin in the spring of 2014.
“It’s going to be really exciting. We’ve hired an aquatics design engineer out of Kansas City. It’s going to be a major, major, major drawing party to Garden City. I feel you’re going to have people from a 150 mile radius coming here. It’s a destination point to visit the water park,” Carmichael said.
“Wolf Lodge West?” quipped Fankhauser, referring to Great Wolf Lodge, a popular indoor water park in Kansas City.
Carmichael said the Garden City water park at the moment would be probably the only indoor water park between Kansas City and Denver.
“There’s other water parks around, but they’re pretty much seasonal to summer. This is going to attract people 12 months out of the year. We’re excited to be part of it,” he said.
