November 2011 - Parks & Recreation - 71

For aquatics facilities, locker rooms and incorrectly
designed zero-depth pools are the two most common
problem areas. John McGovern estimates that only ﬁve

rAFAel FerNANdeZ / dreAmStime, evASerrABASSA, JSmith / iStock

percent of the locker rooms he audits are fully accessible.

Tinley Park is one of the agencies that
is ahead of the curve-the park district
has already completed its access audit
and its transition plan well ahead of the
upcoming March 15, 2012 ADA deadline.
On that date, parks and recreation agencies, water parks and aquatics centers,
amusement parks, golf courses, and miniature golf courses are required to have
assessed their facilities for accessibility
issues and to have developed a transition
plan to prioritize projects to bring facilities into compliance. For many other park
and recreation agencies, this winter will
be spent trying to catch up.
John McGovern, president of Recreation Accessibility Consultants LLC
(RAC), recommends that agencies audit
all of their facilities-aquatics centers,
community centers, parks, etc.-at one
time in order to maximize efficiency and
develop an overall assessment that allows
them to accurately prioritize projects in
their transition plan.
" We try to mesh that with all of the other projects-aquatics isn't the only project that parks and recreation agencies do.
We're auditing their golf course, we're auditing their skatepark, we're auditing their
community center, " McGovern says. " After we've done all of those, we try to take a
big picture look and recommend in what
order the corrective work should occur. "
In Sterling, Illinois, Risk Manager
Steve Brenner says the Sterling Park District used this holistic approach with its
two pools. In this case, the agency consulted with the Illinois attorney general's
office to keep an aging, non-compliant
outdoor pool open for another year so the

indoor facility could be closed and completely remodeled. Once the indoor pool
was fi nished, the outdoor pool was demolished and eventually it will be turned
into green space.
" Now we have an elevator, the ramps,
the parking, the bathrooms, " Brenner
says. " Now we're completely up to date
and up to full compliance....It was better
to do one facility and do it properly. Not
only do we have a modern, nice looking
facility, it's fully compliant and meets everyone's needs, too. "
Aquatics Superintendent Sheri Passey
in Chandler, Arizona, was not that surprised when RAC found problems with
her city's older aquatics facilities. However, the accessibility issues they found
even in the newest of the six facilities
were " difficult to swallow. " From hand
dryers that protruded too far into clear
floor space to shower stalls where the
doors did not swing the correct way to
parking lots with too much slope and
handicapped stalls positioned in the
wrong places, Passey says the whole

process was very educational.
" Whether you're planning on trying to
get your facilities into compliance by that
March 2012 deadline or not, an assessment
of your facilities and having another pair of
eyes come in is invaluable, " she says.
McGovern says that an audit for a typical aquatics facility will take a few hours
using a team of two. The consultants have
separate checklists for pools, parking
lots, locker rooms, restrooms, and reception areas. And they measure everything.
" We're not here to make a value judgment about the quality of your facility or
the quality of your programs-we are just
here to gather facts, " he says. " There's
often a story behind why there's an access deficit at a site....You can't just look at
something; you should always put a tape
to it and measure it. "
For aquatics facilities, McGovern says
that locker rooms and incorrectly designed zero-depth pools are the two most
common problem areas. He estimates that
only five percent of the locker rooms he
audits are fully accessible. Some solutions,

Learning from Others' experiences
lthough the ADA is mostly complaint driven, Project Civic Access is a Department
of Justice (DOJ) program that goes into randomly selected communities,
investigates accessibility policies, and examines all public facilities
built or altered since 1992 to see if the facilities are compliant
with the original ADA standards or the 2010 standards.
If problems are found, communities have to negotiate a
settlement agreement with DOJ that will direct their future
construction and corrective projects. To get a better idea
of what the Department of Justice is emphasizing in ADA
compliance, McGovern suggests reading some of the
settlement agreements posted at www.ada.gov/new.
htm. Settlement agreements have been made with all
types of corporations and local government agencies,
including cities and counties. The agreements posted
on the web site each discuss the scope of the
investigation and the remedial actions DOJ requires to be
made (sometimes at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars).

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November 2011 - Parks & Recreation

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