Atlantic City will be home to the largest indoor beachfront waterpark in the world by July 2023. The Island Waterpark, located at the Showboat Resort in Atlantic City, is a stunning 120,000 square-foot oasis that includes 11 slides, six bars, and a lazy river of 6,500 feet. It holds more than 317,000 gallons. Rico Rock designed and constructed a concrete rock water feature at the entrance of The Island Waterpark to welcome guests.
The story began in January 2022 when the company was exhibiting on the NESPA Pool & Spa Show. They were called to meetings with the project managers of the development.
Bruce Riley, Rico Rock’s owner, says that they are not usually the ones to build this kind of project. In this case, however, we were very involved in a joint venture with American Pond Company in New Jersey who have been our dealer for over 20 years. Riley says that the complexity of the job led to his builders taking on the lead.
The water feature was built offsite in Texas and then trucked over 1,000 miles to the Showboat Resort, near the Atlantic City Convention Center, home of the annual Pool & Spa Show. It was assembled on 10 steel frames.
In the meeting with the general contractors of Atlantic City, it was quickly discovered that Rico Rock was the expert for this type water feature. They requested design ideas for the whole project.
Zayvian Camacho explains that they listened to the contractors’ ideas and gave suggestions, keeping in mind the budget and timing. After analyzing the logistics, it was decided that the best option would be to build the water features offsite in our Texas facility. This resulted in considerable savings in both time and labor.
The water feature is built on 10 steel frames. Most of the frames are 8 feet wide by 8 feet tall and 4 foot deep. Three fully loaded trucks were needed to transport the water feature to Atlantic City once it was finished. It is now 40 feet wide by 20 feet deep by 19 feet tall at the entrance to the park.
This waterfall design has sheets of broken water cascading over cast concrete artificial rocks. The effect is dramatic as the features are divided into three distinct sections. Water flows between 600 and 800 gallons a minute. To create a more dramatic look at night, lighting has been built into both the basins and waterfall ledge.
