On this day in 2003, Mayor Cameron Smyth, members of the Santa Clarita City Council and Parks Commission, city staff, the William S. Hart Union High School District board, Southern California Edison, and local youth celebrated the grand opening of the Santa Clarita Aquatics Center at the George A. Caravalho Santa Clarita Sports Complex.

The year-round center at George A. Caravalho Santa Clarita Sports Complex features three pools, including an Olympic-sized competition pool, a multiuse pool with diving boards, and an activity pool with zero-depth entry and a 168-foot water slide.

Programs today still include swimming lessons, youth and adult water sports, junior lifeguard programs, lap swim, water exercise, kayaking, underwater hockey, water safety classes, recreational swim, and group rentals.

The site also hosts multiday swim meets drawing thousands of participants and spectators each year. Partnerships with the William S. Hart Union High School District allow high school teams and city sports leagues to use the pools and gymnasium.

The Sports Complex itself has a long history, beginning in 1997 when the city purchased a 20-acre property that had been a Merle Norman Cosmetics packaging plant. Named after Santa Clarita’s first permanent city manager, George A. Caravalho, the Complec quickly became a valuable resource for the community.

Amid the 1997–98 El Niño storms, the council converted one building into a temporary winter homeless shelter and remodeled another into basketball and racquetball courts, locker rooms, and recreational spaces, opening in 1998.

A Sports Complex Master Plan developed in 1998–99 guided expansions, including the Activities Center, which opened in the early 2000s with multipurpose rooms, a teen arcade, and recreation areas.

Further land acquisitions and design work in 2000 set the stage for the regional Aquatics Center. Construction began in March 2002, and the center opened on October 18, 2003.

Later developments included a 40,000-square-foot skate park in 2009 and the 2015 rebranding of the Activities Center as “The Center on Centre Pointe Parkway,” converting it into a flexible banquet facility for groups up to 400. Currently under construction is The Rink Sports Pavilion, a 12,000-square-foot facility that can host a roller skating rink, full-size basketball court, three pickleball courts, volleyball court, spectator seating, a commercial kitchen, DJ booth, and more

To read yesterday’s Today in SCV History, click here.

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