 Outdoor News and Events This spring, a $30 million outdoor multiplex, including the largest artificial whitewater PARK in the country, will open in Charlotte, North Carolina. Its creators Believe that it just might transform urbanites into outdoor Addicts.
No simple whitewater park, this $30 million hub will be home to a conference center, a restaurant, an indoor/outdoor climbing facility, a ropes course and 11 miles of trail, all centered around a series of four manmade paddling channels circulating 537,000 gallons of water per minute. Impressive, yes, but how exactly can an outdoor mega-center like this really change whitewater paddling? Although there is no precedent for a project of this scope in the US, many in the whitewater paddling community, from competitors to conservationists, believe the center will launch the sport into the big time. But Wise isn’t necessarily concerned with leading the sport of kayaking into the 21st century. His focus is simply on the sprawling city he calls home: Instead of overstuffed strip malls and stacks of subdivisions, he would like to see the future of urban growth in Charlotte built around an active lifestyle. Build It and They Will Paddle The USNWC is Wise’s personal dream, a culmination of a life spent in the water, and in the South. A native of Charlotte, Wise spent six years practicing law in Atlanta, but came back to the Queen City in 1995. He was woefully aware that the outdoor lifestyle he craved was virtually non-existent in Charlotte, having been snuffed out by the metro area’s indomitable growth. Nonetheless Charlotte was home, and Wise decided that if he wanted to live an active outdoor lifestyle in his backyard, he’d have to bring it there. Soon after the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, he tuned into a radio broadcast about a proposed whitewater park on a small uptown Charlotte site. The park was to be modeled after the Penrith Whitewater Stadium, the venue of the Games’ canoe and kayak events. Intrigued, Wise approached the park’s developers and soon joined the board of advisors. It was quickly apparent that the effort “needed someone to get it out of the garage,” he explains. It was also clear to him that the 15-acre downtown site wouldn’t be able to sustain anything more than a water park. What he needed, what the community needed, was something bigger—a tract of land along the river that could support a multi-faceted outdoor facility. Wise’s vision was met with some resistance. “Some of the board members were more interested in promoting downtown instead of whitewater paddling and an outdoor lifestyle,” says Wise. But his major opponents left and Wise convinced the rest that a full-service urban outdoor theme park, with mountain biking, climbing, a restaurant and retail services, would be necessary to keep the center in the black. The group settled on 300 acres of county land on the western edge of Mecklenburg County bordered by the Catawba River to the west, eight lanes of interstate to the south, and high-reaching power lines and the future I-485 to the east. Charlotte was going to become a hub for artificial outdoor recreation. Urban Whitewater The biggest challenge for Wise and his team was to design a whitewater park that would appeal to play boaters and Olympians, as well as city slickers who have never slipped on a spray skirt. The answer? Unlike other artificial whitewater parks (see “Urban Renewal,” page 25), the USNWC will not rely on a river. While the 300-acre site borders the Catawba, the water will come exclusively from the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Utilities Department. Seven pumps will pull 1200 cfs of water from a 3-acre lower pond up 25 feet to a 2-acre upper pond. A boater will put in on the upper pond, choose one of four runs, paddle to the lower pond and then be transported back up on a conveyor belt, never leaving the boat. In all, there will be more than 4,000 feet of artificial river to accommodate all skill levels. Paddling’s top brass certainly believe this type of accessible urban park will elevate the sport. In 2003, USA Canoe and Kayak (USACK), the governing body of international competition in the US, moved its offices from Lake Placid, New York, to downtown Charlotte. USNWC will serve as the organization’s official training center, and USACK hopes the park will launch US paddling to the top of the podium. American paddlers excel on natural rivers, but that experience doesn’t necessarily transfer to international whitewater park competitions, where US teams lag behind the Europeans. American paddlers feel a lack of accessible facilities in the US has been the problem. “The center will allow us to level the playing field with the Europeans,” says Chris Hipgrave, USACK’s high performance director. Plus, the center will play an influential role in promoting the sport. In Germany, Switzerland and the Czech Republic, urban whitewater centers have helped develop strong after-school programs and the sport itself has attracted a strong following. Not so in the US, where whitewater is often miles from population centers. While freestyle boating has grown in popularity, according to Wayne Dickert, former Olympian and the paddling school director at the Nantahala Outdoor Center, “participation in whitewater paddling as an accessible, lifetime outdoor activity has declined over the last few years.” “The future of whitewater paddling is in these urban courses,” asserts Hipgrave. Manmade parks are also essential for the development of current athletes. Rebecca Giddens, 28, who took a silver medal in the K-1 slalom at the Athens Games, has been racing on artificial courses since 1994 and plans to spend at least two to three months training in Charlotte every year. “It will hopefully bring more of a following to the sport, and more dollars, so paddling athletes can make a living,” she says. Although the pros are on board, not everyone is convinced that the USNWC will appeal to the weekend warriors and novices, however. “Competitive whitewater courses have little resemblance to the kind of recreational paddling most people do,” says boater Mark Cecchini of Washington DC. “Just because you build it doesn’t mean they will come. Frankly, it’s like putting a national downhill skiing center in Nebraska.” Conservation and… Subdivisions Whether or not the USNWC boosts participation in the sport, the focus on manmade whitewater does raise some big ethical questions: Will these new adherents just want to paddle in the urban playground and ignore issues that affect the preservation and protection of natural rivers? Artificial climbing gyms have boosted the numbers of climbers, but they don’t necessarily teach environmental ethics. “It’s not until gym climbers go outside for the first time that you start to see the ethical impact,” says Rob Shurr, director of marketing for the Access Fund. Likewise, it will be up to the USNWC to instill park playboaters with a love of wild rivers. “The onus of developing an environmental stewardship is on us,” asserts Mark Singleton, executive director of American Whitewater. “It’s a great opportunity for the paddling community.” It’s also an opportunity the whitewater community has previously bungled. More than $20 million of public money was invested to develop the Ocoee River in Tennessee for the Atlanta Games in 1996. According to Singleton, the greatest legacy of that investment is “really incredible bathrooms.” Creating a legacy program and environmental consciousness was not part of the package. “This time around it’s critical that we incorporate a stewardship ethic,” he says. Then there’s the question of the environmental impact of USNWC itself. Naturally, Wise is slightly squeamish about the development. In all, 49 acres of land will be deforested for the project. While the land being developed is no wilderness, a forest in metro Charlotte is a rare sight. According to a 1999 study by the UNC Charlotte Urban Institute, the metro area lost 41 acres of open space every day, which is about the equivalent of loosing a soccer field every hour. That pace has only increased in the past five years: With 2.2 million residents in the 14-county metro area, Charlotte is the largest city in North Carolina and it’s the seventh fastest growing major city in the US since 2000. But the reality is that few tracts of land in Charlotte, unless protected for conservation, are safe from development, even land held in the public domain. The county had vague plans to develop the USNWC land that included a park or possibly a golf course. “Let’s be honest with ourselves, we are developing the land,” says Wise, “but our compromise is that we will be better stewards than the possible alternatives.” To guarantee they make the grade, the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation has monitored the development carefully. “This is a massive project and we’re concerned about the impact, particularly during construction,” says Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby. The USNWC has allowed the watchdog group to conduct inspections during construction, and, so far, things have been smooth. “Development and conservation don’t have to be mutually exclusive. The center will hopefully inspire more people to conserve the river,” says Erin Culbert of the Catawba Lands Conservancy. “Most people don’t know the city has a river—the Catawba may as well be on Mars. It’s just not a part of the city’s daily life.” Wise, however, is betting that it will be. His recipe is an injection of outdoor recreation into everyday urban sprawl. And the community is responding: A large subdivision with 2,000 homes is planned nearby that will have trails, walking access to the center, natural space and strict environmental guidelines. The development will be called Whitewater. While the subdivision may not signal a larger trend in the housing market, it could serve as a model for Charlotte and other cities suffering from sprawl. “Once the concept of the center came along, we changed our whole approach,” says Bill Daleure, president of the Land Development Division for Crosland, Inc. “We wanted to create a project that would appeal to a unique lifestyle, to people who appreciate green space and want to spend time outdoors.” The dividends Pending the success of the USNWC, you may just find an outdoor multi-plex in a sprawling metropolis near you. Many in the paddling industry agree that attracting more families and youth into the boater mix will balance the extreme image of paddling with a tamer, friendlier style of boating. “No one has dared take on a project of this scale in the US,” says Wayne Dickert. “If people show up and have a positive experience in Charlotte, it will be a huge plus for the sport.” Obviously, Wise hopes the center will inaugurate a Golden Age for paddling in the US and that it will generate a positive return for the USNWC board, but he wants to see even bigger dividends for a city that is starved for open space, outdoor recreation and adventure. What he thinks distinguishes this development from an amusement park is its guiding principle of promoting a sustainable outdoor lifestyle. It’s unlikely Charlotte will become an outdoor hotspot—the next, say, Boulder, Colorado, or Bend, Oregon—and the USNWC certainly won’t take the place of the authentic outdoors, but the center will, Wise hopes, add a new slant to urban dwelling. “We can’t replace the river experience,” he says. “But we can bring the outdoors to more people.” © Copyright 1999-2006 by Hooked on the Outdoors www.ruhooked.com |
