A new public swim beach will open this spring in Rock Hill. Here’s what we know now
Rock Hill is a step closer to a new swim beach.
Rock Hill City Council voted Monday night to approve a lease agreement with Duke Energy for property at India Hook and Elks Park roads. The site will become a new waterfront park.
”This project is substantially complete,” said deputy city manager Jimmy Bagley. “They’re prepared to turn the keys over to the city for a spring opening.”
The city recreation department will operate the new park. It will be open sunrise to sunset. Amenities will include restrooms, a canoe and kayak launch, fishing piers, trails, picnic tables and benches. The most notable, though, is the new swim beach.
Ebenezer Park has a swim beach. For Tega Cay residents, Windjammer Park has one. Otherwise, there hasn’t been significant public swimming access on Lake Wylie. The new swim beach in Rock Hill will be considered a natural swimming area, meaning it won’t have stationed lifeguards.
Duke operates almost a dozen Catawba River lakes from the North Carolina mountains to the South Carolina sandhills. Duke needs a federal license to operate hydroelectric facilities on them. In 2006, Duke signed an agreement with almost 70 regional stakeholders to apply for a new license, which was granted in 2015. The application included promised public recreation and environmental improvements throughout the basin.
The new Rock Hill park is part of that pledge. So is a massive upgrade effort at Allison Creek Access Area in York County. Upgrades at Dutchman’s Creek Access Area and restrooms at Buster Boyd Access Area in Lake Wylie already are complete.
Beyond Lake Wylie, planned recreation improvements range from a swim beach on Lake Norman to Springs Park Access Area on Fishing Creek Reservoir to the Great Falls restoration of river flow in areas where it was dammed off decades ago.
Bagley, who sat in on years of stakeholder meetings during relicensing, said what city officials now call Lake Park won’t have motor boat access but will have plenty of amenities. Duke will own the site and lease it to the city through the license term, which goes to 2055.
”Hopefully they would have a new license extended (to keep the part operating beyond that date),” Bagley said.
Apart from staffing similar to other city parks, the new site comes at Duke’s expense as part of the agreement.
“It was a long, painstaking process,” Bagley said of relicensing. “It didn’t cost us anything. It will have staffing, that will cost us in the future.”
Councilwoman Kathy Pender said Bagley’s work to represent the city in relicensing was key to the coming attraction. As were other area representatives.
”Part of that was making sure our community came away with something out of that partnership,” Pender said. “Not only this park, but there are others in York County that have come out of that.”
Councilman John Black said the new park meets a need in Rock Hill.
”This is a great amenity and adding something our community really doesn’t have,” Black said.
The addition in Rock Hill grows a range of city offerings to access the Catawba River. The Piedmont Medical Center Trail runs along the river at Riverwalk. The Rock Hill Velodrome, Rock Hill Criterium and Rock Hill Outdoor Center Greens also are at Riverwalk. Just downstream, near Waterford Golf Club, there’s River Park.
The new Rock Hill beachfront park also adds to river recreation sites across the region. Tega Cay recently opened ballfields, trails and more at Catawba Park. York County continues work on the 1,900-acre Catawba Bend Preserve on the Rock Hill banks of the Catawba.
