Eli Soll hopes a new water park planned for the Kennebec River in downtown Skowhegan will become an attraction for local families and a tool for recruiting workers to the area.
“We’re the gateway to the Great North Woods but we don’t have that one thing,” he said last week while standing on a bridge above the raging river below. “Having a river park might be a determining factor for somebody.”
The Skowhegan River Park — formerly known as Run of River — is an idea that’s been around town for 20 years, said Town Manager Christine Almand. But the recent infusion of a $2 million federal grant, one of dozens of projects statewide to benefit from the earmarks in the federal budget, means the project will get underway this summer.
“This $2 million is amazing,” said Kristina Cannon, executive director of Main Street Skowhegan. “It’s such great news.”
The first phase, which will begin this summer, will focus on improving access to the water. The river runs through a gorge in Skowhegan, which means they will need to build stairs to the river on one side and a wheelchair accessible area on the other.
The following summer, they hope to add the water features, which will involve excavating the river bottom to create more dramatic drops and constricting the flow of water in other areas to enhance whitewater opportunities. Further down the river, there will be a plate installed on the bottom of the river that can be moved up and down to create certain effects, Cannon said.
Those features will be controlled remotely through a tablet by “wave technicians,” she said.
Almand said another part of the project will involve removing old bridge debris from the river that’s been there since the flood of 1987.
Cannon said the $2 million in federal money will be paired with $1.4 million from the town to get the project started. They’ve also applied for another $5 million federal grant and hope to do more fundraising to get to the projected total cost of $8.6 million.
“In an ideal world, we’ll have this looking much more welcoming and nice this summer,” Cannon said.
Research they’ve done on downtown water parks in other parts of the country — including Columbus, Georgia and Salida, Colorado — has shown that one in five people who come to the park will get in the water. The others will be looking for places to watch the action, trails to hike along the river, shops to browse in and places to eat, Cannon said.
The goal is to have a place for kayakers, paddle boarders, river surfers, boogie boarders and tubers to enjoy the river. But before they can do work in the river, they will need about a dozen state and federal permits.
Soll, who runs a business that helps children with developmental disabilities, said the federal grant should give a boost to the project at a critical time.
“There’s a certain amount of community who have lost faith and a certain amount who doesn’t understand what it is,” he said. “I think we’re going to win over a lot of people quickly.”