One great thing would be to have a whitewater park in the city of Sioux Falls South Dakota. Manmade whitewater parks have been a growing trend in the past decade. With cities using the potential to drive up the economy and the great thing is that it’s working. For many in the area you know you have to travel a great distance to get some great whitewater kayaking done. Sure Split Rock Creek and Skunk are fun but very easy courses to new whitewater kayakers. Falls Park, well you have to be an expert to do that stretch. So where does a person go? Charles City Iowa whitewater course, Wausau Wisconsin whitewater course, Kettle River Sandstone Minnesota, or Rapid City South Dakota? You can but cost of traveling and spending the night can be quite high. On average our out of town trips take about 10 hours round trip and estimated of $200.00 per person for the trip. This is if we camp and only kayak. Plus you have to make sure the water is high enough to kayak. Rapid City’s Rapid Creek can go down in 24 hours, so doesn’t give you much time to plan a trip. This is why I came up with the idea of us getting a whitewater park for a close easy place to enhance whitewater kayaking skills and help boost the economy. (I have put links below this article to show economic value of a whitewater park and existing/proposed whitewater parks.) Sioux Falls needs this with our kayak groups growing larger every year. I know there is interest and training available for this whitewater park. The good thing is that it won’t be just for kayaking. Existing park users use kayaks, canoes, rafts, tubes, stand up paddle boards, rip boards and boogie boards. Whitewater parks are a safe and great place for swimming and fishing. The fast running rapids provide oxygen that fish love and rapids form eddy’s and deep pools fish love. And when we say whitewater park in Sioux Falls many think of the Falls Park which can be dangerous but with these engineered rapids it will be safe to swim and won’t cause extra flooding (might even help out the flooding). Right now meetings have been completed with the Park and Rec. department of Sioux Falls and sounds like a good plan long as everything pans out. Now we are trying to get people aware and supportive of the project. The next step if we have enough supporters will be to have professionals come down to the area. Here they will check out all the locations and run the rivers themselves to find the best place to have a whitewater park. Once this spot is found they research, plan and design a whitewater park. This is when it gets fun. The design company then will show and talk about the whitewater park design to the community, shareholders, and investors. Then the hard part, investors, it will be hard but we want to get investors and donations to build this park. We do not wish to use any tax money for this because we want it boosting the economy right away once its completed. Boosting the economy you may ask how. Well like I said before my group of friends spend average of $200.00 per person to go to different locations. That is about $2,000.00 per trip with my ten friends. We do about 2 or 3 trips a year. Just think of all the different groups that will come to use our whitewater park and other rivers for kayaking if we build a whitewater park. People will need to spend money on food, hotel, state parks, camping, dining, and night life. This will also help current business that sell kayaking gear. They will be able to start selling whitewater kayaking gear for local and visiting whitewater kayakers. This may also boost people opening other business or rentals. I wish I had a reason not to support the Sioux Falls Whitewater Park but I don’t and wish that you would support this and share with everyone you know.
Other Parks and Proposed Parks:
Designers:
Economic Impact:
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