The park would create 100 full-time jobs, according to publication.
Blue Mountain Ski Area is planning a $20 million water park that would open in 2016 and create 500 jobs, 100 of which would be fulltime, according to a report in Lehigh Valley Business.
The publication reported that the plans have been four years in the making and also involve the possibility of constructing a 100-room hotel on the site.
“The water park came about because we’d really like to build a hotel on the property,” Blue Mountain Ski Area President Barbara Green told Lehigh Valley Business. “All of the feasibility studies came back telling us that a hotel would not be profitable unless we had something that would attract a lot of customers in the summer time.”
The ski area is in Lower Towamensing Township, Carbon County. It is just north of that county’s border with Northampton County. It has long been a popular destination for skiers and snowboarders from the Lehigh Valley.
Blue Mountain bills itself as having the highest vertical in Pennsylvania at 1,082 feet. It also has hosted the Pennsylvania Blues Festival and other events throughout the year. Last year, the resort opened a luge track that is now used by the U.S. Olympic luge team for training.
Lehigh Valley Business reported that the new water park would initially include a wave pool and water slides among other amenities; it would bring an estimated 3,000 visitors daily.
Other ski resorts in Northeast have developed water parks in recent years as a way to draw visitors during the summer months.
Camelback Mountain Waterpark, which includes 37 water slides at the popular Monroe County ski resort, drew more than 366,000 visitors last summer, according to a news release.