NEWS: Hawaiian Falls building two new water parks

[jedimaster1227]

http://www.hfalls.com/ws/

 

Season passes to the new $13 million Hawaiian Falls Waterpark and Adventure Park go on sale at a discounted rate of $49.99 beginning at 11:12 p.m. Tuesday, November 12. Only 3,000 season passes will be sold at this rate and only White Settlement residents and White Settlement ISD families are eligible for this 45% discount.

 

Season passes for the general public will go on sale Monday, November 18, at a special holiday rate of $64.99, a $25 savings off the regular $89.99 season pass price. Season pass sales will be limited to a total of 12,500 for the first year of operation.

 

At 11:12 p.m. Tuesday, November 12, White Settlement residents and families with students in the White Settlement ISD can purchase the specially-priced “My Island” season passes at http://www.store.hfalls.com. A maximum of 3,000 White Settlement resident season passes will be sold on a first-come, first-served basis at $49.99, a $40 savings off the regular season pass price of $89.99.

 

Hawaiian Falls White Settlement season passes are valid every regular operating day and include over $100 in free and discount offers. Other season pass options include an “Island Hopper” season pass which includes unlimited admission to any of the seven Hawaiian Falls waterparks in Garland, The Colony, Mansfield, Roanoke, Waco and the new waterparks opening in 2014 in Pflugerville (north of Austin) and White Settlement.

 

The 16-acre Hawaiian Falls Waterpark and Adventure Park, and the 5,000 square foot Aloha Conference Center is scheduled to open May 2014 near Veterans Park, Clifford Street & Loop 820, in White Settlement.

 

The Hawaiian Falls White Settlement waterpark will be open from Memorial Day weekend through Labor Day 2014, and will include a football field-sized wavepool, a 10,000 square-foot activity pool with a floating water obstacle course, splash pads and water walks, a 1,000-foot-long river with rapids and fountains, and several multi-slide towers featuring speed slides, tube slides and a multi-lane mat racer slide.

 

The year-round Hawaiian Falls Adventure Park will also open Memorial Day weekend and will feature multi-level ropes courses, adventure trail climbing nets, a military-style obstacle course, 60-foot high climbing and rappelling walls, a six-story Freefall attraction and 500-foot long zip lines. All the attractions will be adjacent to and above the Hawaiian Fall White Settlement waterpark site.

 

The year-round entertainment complex is expected to attract more than 300,000 guests per year, and will also include a 20,000 square-foot indoor family arcade, private birthday party rooms and a restaurant.

 

The Aloha Conference Center will accommodate up to 400 people for dining or up to 1,000 people theater-style for meetings, conferences and team building events year-round. Full-service catering will also be available.

 

Celebrating more than a decade of bringing families closer together, Hawaiian Falls operates waterparks in Garland, The Colony, Mansfield, Roanoke and Waco, and plans to open another park in Pflugerville, north of Austin, in 2014. More info at http://www.hfalls.com

 

 

http://www.star-telegram.com/2013/11/17/5344696/hawaiian-falls-park-expected-to.html?rh=1

 

Dirt will start flying soon to build the Hawaiian Falls water and adventure parks, and the buzz is making big waves in western Tarrant County.

 

Last week, Hawaiian Falls and city officials completed the final details on the 16-acre complex with the two parks, a family arcade and an events center that will be built near Veterans Park at Clifford Street and Loop 820.

 

Under the agreements approved by the City Council, the city’s Economic Development Corp. agreed to fund the construction with a $12.6 million sales tax revenue bond that will be repaid in 20 years. Sales tax revenue from the water park and adventure park will be used to pay off the debt.

 

“It will be out of this world what this park will do for our city,” Mayor Jerry Burns said. “A lot of people worked hard to make this happen.”

 

David Bush, president and founder of the Hawaiian Falls company, said: “It was a major moment between us and the City Council; we agreed to all of the contracts. It is very exciting.”

 

Negotiations to build the water park flowed smoothly, and Bush praised city officials for their willingness to approve plans quickly.

 

Construction will start soon so that the water and adventure parks will be open in May, in time for the summer season. There will be an invitation-only groundbreaking Dec. 3.

 

Leap of faith

 

In September, Bush spent $3.5 million ordering the wave pool, water slides and other play equipment for the water park before all the details were in place, he said.

 

“This is where my faith comes in,” he said. “There aren’t many manufacturers for this equipment, and you have to start early.”

 

When the park opens, visitors will enter in a 20,000-square-foot building featuring a restaurant, laser tag and other family activities. Hawaiian Falls is also building an aloha events center that will be good for corporate events and team-building activities. The events center will also feature catering, Bush said.

 

Once visitors leave the building they can head to the waterpark or adventure park, Bush said.

 

The water park, which will open from Memorial Day through the Labor Day weekend, has a 1,000-foot river with fountains and rapids, a football-field-size wave pool and an activity pool with a floating obstacle course. The adventure park, open year-round, will have zip lining, a military-style obstacle course climbing and rappelling walls and a six-story free-fall attraction.

 

Economic impact

 

Company spokesman David Alvey said the parks will create seasonal and year-round jobs in the White Settlement area including 250 to 300 seasonal jobs and 30 to 50 year-round jobs. The company will hold job fairs in the spring, he said.

 

Alvey said the parks will likely attract around 300,000 visitors a year from communities such as Weatherford, Abilene and Stephenville.

 

He added that hotels in the area are eager for the water and adventure parks to open.

 

Hawaiian Falls operates water parks in Garland, The Colony, Mansfield, Roanoke and Waco, and plans to open one in Pflugerville, north of Austin, in 2014.

 

Meanwhile, Burns said Hawaiian Falls is coming at a time when White Settlement is recovering from the economic slump.

 

“White Settlement is picking up,” he said. “God is being good to us.”

 

http://impactnews.com/austin-metro/round-rock-pflugerville-hutto/pflugerville-inks-deal-to-build-water-park-by-may-2014/

 

Austin-area residents may soon have a new option for relief from the summer heat—a $21 million Hawaiian Falls water/adventure park slated to open in May 2014 in Pflugerville.

 

On Aug. 6, the city of Pflugerville and the Pflugerville Economic Development Corp. agreed to a development deal with California-based Harvest Family Entertainment to construct the new park south of the intersection of FM 685 and Toll 130 near Stone Hill Town Center. The park will represent the sixth and largest Hawaiian Falls park built by the company in Texas.

 

The development will include a 15-acre water park with slides, a wave pool and splash pads and a 5-acre adventure park with zip line rides as well as trail and rope courses. Five acres of the land is reserved for parking and future park expansions. The facility is being designed with features and an atmosphere to appeal to families and may also be able to host corporate events, PCDC Executive Director Floyd Akers said.

 

“[Hawaiian Falls] is a money-making project for the city,” Akers said. “This is going to promote Pflugerville regionwide.”

 

The agreement between the city of Pflugerville, the PCDC and Hawaiian Falls replicates a public/private partnership the company has also inked with other Texas cities, most recently Waco, which opened a Hawaiian Falls water park in 2012.

 

Incentives

 

According to the incentive agreement, the city will finance the project through the sale of $21 million in bonds, which will subsequently be repaid over 30 years through ticket sales receipts collected by Hawaiian Falls. The city will own the park, while the company will manage the engineering, construction and day-to-day operations and will retain any revenue that exceeds the bond payments. Hawaiian Falls will also receive a rebate of 90 percent of the property taxes it pays to the city during the 30-year initial agreement. Hawaiian Falls also retains the right to extend the agreement for up to 20 additional years.

 

The agreement also requires Hawaiian Falls to provide the PCDC a one-time payment of $750,000 prior to the issuance of the bonds. In addition, the PCDC will receive all of the sales taxes collected from Hawaiian Falls—a total expected to exceed $6.1 million over the 30-year life of the agreement. The PCDC will also receive 10 percent of the property taxes collected from the park.

 

While the city of Pflugerville is not likely to receive much in the way of direct revenue from Hawaiian Falls, city leaders believe the park could spur future developments, draw consumers to nearby stores and restaurants, and add hundreds of summer jobs for local high school– and college-age students. Hawaiian Falls is expected to hire 15 full-time and 300 seasonal employees.

 

According to an economic impact study conducted for the city, the park could generate more than $498 million in taxable sales—within the park itself and through surrounding businesses—during its first 30 years of operation.

 

“We were not looking at the water park by itself being the 'game changer’ for us,” Pflugerville Mayor Jeff Coleman said. "We are looking at what it is bringing along with it and what the attraction is going to do for us.

 

“[Hawaiian Falls] is literally going to be across from Stone Hill Town Center. I anticipate at least one more sit-down restaurant because of this. There are already rumors of a hotel coming in because of this. We anticipate the ancillary benefit is going to be significant.”

 

Past project

 

The Hawaiian Falls project is not the city’s first attempt at drawing a water park development to Pflugerville. A proposed $16 million privately funded Blu Bambu water park that was supposed to open in 2010 fell through because of a lack of financing.

 

The difference between the failed Blu Bambu project and the forthcoming Hawaiian Falls park is the experience of the participants and the secured financing, Akers and Coleman said.

 

“We have credibility—if we say we are going to do something, we are going to do it. It is our pride; we don’t back out of things,” Harvest Family Entertainment President David Busch said. “We are going to do this.”

 

Busch said his company and its subsidiaries have built and managed 20 water parks throughout the nation and one in China since the mid-1980s. The company expects to break ground on the Pflugerville park by fall at the latest and be operating in time for Memorial Day in 2014.

 

“We only do these parks where there is a void in the family entertainment area,” he said. “The stars have really aligned, and we are excited about Pflugerville.”

Edited November 25, 2013 by jedimaster1227

[gisco]

I had to google the locations to see that they were by Austin and Fort Worth Texas.