Carmel Clay Parks & Recreation – Monon Center

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Set in a new park envisioned to be the “Jewel” of the Carmel-Clay park system, the Monon Center features an indoor natatorium containing a leisure depth pool and a six-lane, non-competition lap pool; a three-court gymnasium; health/fitness areas; an indoor children’s play zone; a café; flexible lobby space; administrative offices; program rooms; and a banquet room with a catering kitchen – are augmented by amenities contained in the facility’s accompanying, 3.5-acre, 2,098-capacity outdoor aquatic center. The amenities present in the finished project reflects input gleaned from a year-long series of public forums. The outdoor aquatic center was designed to provide multi-generational outdoor aquatic programming, features a zero-edge depth activity pool; a four-lane, non-competition lap pool; a lazy river, a “kiddie” pool and children’s sprayground; two large water slides; a deep pool with a one-meter diving board and drop slide; and a bathhouse and a concession area, to which visitors are welcomed by a dynamic tensile fabric structure that is sculptural in nature, establishing a visual and salient identity for the outdoor complex, and providing a textile counterpoint to the brick, stone, steel and glass of the community center’s exterior. Designed to serve as an “anchor” to the inter-urban Monon Trail, the Center features an enclosed pedestrian bridge that spans the trail and links the passive, dense, mature forested areas of the site to the east, and active programming spaces in the open meadows of the site to the west of the Center.