Enhancing the growing city’s aquatic options has been stuck in planning for 20 years
EBS STAFF
Each night at the Bozeman Swim Center, roughly 200 kids crowd lanes for practice with the Barracudas swim team while swim lessons, lap swimmers and other aquatic programs compete for space. As Bozeman’s population continues to grow, so does the demand for community gathering places geared toward young families, as illustrated by the local aquatic facilities.
Over the last five years, the three-time state champion Barracudas team has grown, Head Coach Kyle Hendricks told EBS. Similarly the city’s swim lessons fill as soon as signups open, leaving a hundreds-long waitlist; last year, 822 kids learned to swim at Bozeman’s two aquatic facilities, Bogert Pool and Bozeman Swim Center, and over 900 kids landed on the waitlist for sessions.
“Our swim lessons are extremely popular,” Elizabeth Hill, BPR’s aquatics manager said. BPR is trying to meet that demand. In 2025, the department held 211 group swim lessons compared to 144 swim lessons in 2024.
This growing demand mirrors the city’s 8.1% population increase between 2020 and 2024 as more young families move to Gallatin Valley to experience its active, outdoor lifestyle, and increasingly to gather and recreate.
A community center, in waiting
That void is a conundrum that weighs on Mitchell Overton, director of BPR.
“ It’s unfortunate,” Overton said. “We want to teach these kids to swim. This is a life-saving, life safety issue.”
High demand for aquatics programs has put more pressure on BPR’s call for a new recreation and swim center, a priority that’s been highlighted since 2007 in the parks, recreation, open space and trails plan that was adopted by the Bozeman City Commission. One of the plan’s recommendations was to develop two new family-oriented leisure aquatic centers in different parts of the city.
“The City’s slogan is ‘Bozeman: The Most Livable Place,’” the plan stated in its introduction. “The City’s parks, recreation programs and facilities, open spaces, and trails play a vital role in defining Bozeman as ‘the most livable place.’ This plan represents the City’s desire to proactively plan for these amenities; to achieve excellence in meeting both current and future needs.”
In the plan, a multipurpose community recreation center and aquatics center are two items listed on the city’s top ten capital facility recommendations. Overton explained that while an aquatic center has been in park plans for nearly 20 years, the design for a swim and recreation center in Bozeman went on ice a few years ago.
In 2023, BPR hired architects to design a center to house both recreation and swimming facilities. At the same time, the state of Montana was reassessing property values and by the that summer, median home property taxes had risen by 21%. The decision was made to remove the bond for a recreation center from ballots to limit tax burden, Overton said.
Today, nearly two decades since the initial plan was published, the timing seems to be lining up.
“It’s now coming back up again due to increased pressures of a population that desires these amenities, the recreational outlet, and swim lessons,” Overton told EBS.
The current iteration of the plan shrinks the 2023 design from 103,000 square feet to 38,000 square feet, keeping all of the core recreation needs like a pool, courts and community rooms, but making it affordable enough to fund the project.
“I think we’re getting to this time that says, ‘Hey, let’s pull this together for the community,’” Overton said. Bozeman city officials will need to approve a ballot measure to help fund a new hub for Bozeman’s recreation, including a swim center, allowing voters to choose if they want to support the project with their tax dollars. A ballot measure could come as soon as November, but an immediate and significant push by city commissioners is required to hit that deadline. Mayor Joey Morrison told EBS that as the city focuses on public safety and affordable housing, a ballot initiative supporting a new recreation center isn’t likely in the next two years. However, Morrison agrees that a facility for Bozeman’s growing west side could be beneficial to residents.
“I think it’s a good thing,” Morrison said. “It’s an essential need for the west side.”
Building the ‘most livable place’
While momentum builds on the potential for a recreation center, BPR is gearing up for the opening of Bozeman’s first splash pad park. The family-friendly, no-fee water playground in Story Mill Community Park will open on May 27, allowing families and residents a spot to cool off, and kids a chance to play and familiarize themselves with water before learning to swim. Overton is excited about the accessibility of the splash pad and sees it as an example of accessible recreation for a growing town.
“It just really provides this very equitable access for anyone in the community and, I can’t say it enough, just really removes barriers,” Overton said. “Public parks are just … the great equalizer. Anyone can go of any means.”
On top of swim lessons, lap swimmers, triathletes, swim clubs, high school physical education classes and swim teams all use pool facilities for fitness and enjoyment. Adults take lessons too that range from learning to swim to refining their strokes. Hill noted that a new recreation space for Bozeman residents would be beneficial.
“Our facilities, they’re busy, but it’s good … we’re able to offer a lot and I think that there’s really a desire and an appetite for aquatics in the community,” Hill said. “I would really love to see a recreation facility for families. I feel like that would be extremely popular.”
For Hendricks and the Bozeman Barracudas, a new facility is an exciting opportunity to continue meeting the demand for high quality competitive swimming and coaching.
“ With the size of the team that we have, we’re always looking for more space to swim,” Hendricks said. When he arrives to coach and sees seven to eight kids packed into each lane, Hendricks needs to readjust practice plans. That means that fine-tuning work is harder to do. “We’re able to do so much more effective and advanced coaching with more lane space available as opposed to when we’re really crowded and there’s not a lot of space, our practices have to be a little more simple.”
In addition to the new splash pad, Bogert Pool will open for the season on June 20. At the end of the summer season, BPR will conduct some repairs and improvements of the pool, keeping it up to speed with Bozeman Swim Center’s 2024 upgrades. As BPR works out plans to add another aquatic facility, Overton highlighted that affordability is still important when working in public parks.
“That’s a large part of what it’s about, and that’s part of what we do in public parks, and that’s what we do with public pools. They’re affordable to access,” Overton said. “Swim lessons are quality but still attainable. And it’s what we would do and would plan to do with a recreation and aquatic center—a true community center.”
From crowded swim lanes to long lesson waitlists, demand for accessible recreation and aquatics programs shows little sign of slowing and as Bozeman continues to grow, city officials, recreation leaders and the broader community are faced with the same question: how to build and maintain the community spaces that keep pace with that growth.
Explore Big Sky is published by Outlaw Partners, whose subsidiaries include real estate development in Bozeman.
