GREAT FALLS — Anticipation ran high around the Scheels Aim High Big Sky Aquatic and Recreation Center, a 45,000-square-foot, $20 million facility that opened in Great Falls a little over a year ago.
Sparked by a $10 million grant from the U.S. Department of Defense, the recreation center project took shape as the city demolished its older indoor pool and planned to move away from a separate rec center downtown.
The new facility seemed to fill a community need at the right time. After a year of operation, Aim High Big Sky has hosted birthday parties, swim classes, parking lot markets and a sold-out Nerf toy gun battle event. That’s in addition to the daily gym, pool and court use.
But it has also struggled to find its financial footing as city staff work to tailor this brand-new facility to the community. Revenues from the first year in business came in well below expectations. Though the center is expected to cover its own expenses, it required a $300,000 infusion from the city coffers last year for operations and is budgeted for an additional $400,000 subsidy this year.
Going forward, the city’s Park and Recreation department will review its costs and programming. Specific to Aim High Big Sky, interim Park and Recreation Director Jessica Compton told Montana Free Press that the department is focusing on marketing the Aim High Big Sky and attracting more users with creative offerings.
“Whenever you open a new building, you’re going to find challenges,” Compton said. “You have to learn the quirks of the facility. Learn the scheduling.”
STARTUP COSTS
In June 2024, while planning the coming year’s budget, Great Falls city commissioners stared at a line item for the equivalent of 25 new full-time employees and the expenses that came with them. They were to staff the new Aim High Big Sky center, which hadn’t yet opened.
City Manager Greg Doyon tried to ease concerns. He said that running Aim High Big Sky would require a new management strategy. Previously, the Park and Recreation department ran an indoor pool on the outskirts of downtown and a separate rec center blocks away. With Aim High Big Sky, those two facilities are under one roof. And it’s a state-of-the-art center that could be bigger and better than the previous versions.
Much of the success would also be tied to the community’s enthusiasm for the center, Doyon said.
“I’m hoping that when people have an opportunity to walk through Aim High Big Sky, they’ll be proud of it and they’ll want to go use it,” he said during the June 2024 meeting.
The center held a grand opening on July 9 with Commissioner Susan Wolff cutting the ribbon surrounded by representatives from Scheels, the city administration and Malmstrom Air Force Base. The large, modern building changed the feel of a once-sleepy Lions Park into a bustling green space.
But even with a $180,000 infusion from the outdoor swimming pools fund to get started, Aim High Big Sky slipped into the red. The facility has its own fund modeled to cover expenses through user fees and events. But in just three months, expenses had already chewed through that entire infusion, and the fund was running a growing deficit.
Aim High Big Sky received another $300,000 in support from the city’s general fund for the 2025 budget when city officials closely guarded general fund revenues, which mostly come from property taxes and pay for, among other things, public safety departments.
By the end of the fiscal year on June 30, 2025, city documents showed a fund deficit of $183,000 after revenues came in more than $1 million under initial estimates.
And sometime during the spring of 2025, former Park and Recreation Director Steve Herrig quietly resigned. Herrig took the reins in 2018 and led the department through Aim High Big Sky’s development. The move put Compton, who was Herrig’s deputy, in the department’s lead position.
At the launch of Aim High Big Sky, it was tough to project revenue for a new facility with zero members, according to Compton. They had to learn visitors’ patterns and then try to attract users for some of the lesser-used hours in mid-morning. The staff pool specialist, who had worked in past years at the Natatorium, was learning a brand new system at Aim High. And it wasn’t totally clear how much it would cost to keep the large building running.
“You’re working out the kinks on where your utility bills are going to be,” Compton said.
For the 2026 budget, Aim High Big Sky is set for a larger general fund subsidy: $400,000. But the facility has also trimmed its expenses and is reducing its staff by the equivalent of nearly 11 full-time employees. Most of those are open positions, and no one was let go, according to Compton.
And a year in, the staff is still tinkering with new events and program offerings and marketing plans. Facing an upcoming fee structure study, there are still some kinks to work out.
“I think we’re getting there. We passed our one-year birthday,” Compton said. “It’s the functionality of our equipment. With the pools, it’s all a brand new system.”
A POOL FOR THE CITY
In the 1960s, engineers condemned and tore down the original Morony Natatorium in Great Falls, which opened in 1917 and had been the first free public indoor pool in the state. The city built another pool on the same site, seemingly tempting fate. A structural study in 2011 showed that the building’s foundation was failing, and the constant flow of groundwater would continue to sink the newer Morony Natatorium into the ground.
Eventually, a wall collapsed, and city officials decided in 2018 to close the Natatorium.
“We made the decision to close it; I was part of that,” said Bill Bronson, who was a city commissioner at the time. “It was a sad deal, but we really had no choice.”
The building was later demolished, and community members made it clear that they wanted a replacement indoor pool.
In 2020, city officials pursued a federal grant called the Defense Community Infrastructure Program, which funds amenities in cities that are closely linked to military communities. For Great Falls, the pitch was that a grand aquatics and recreation center would be an attractive amenity for Malmstrom service members and their families.
It was a highly competitive grant, according to former Mayor Bob Kelly. He told MTFP that it was a surprise when the $10 million award was announced in September 2020.
“It was a very exciting time when we got the award,” Kelly said.
The grant represented nearly half of the planned costs — a significant boost to the vision of a new indoor pool. But it came with a local matching requirement, which meant that Great Falls also had to find $10 million.
City leaders opted to tap into the Park Maintenance District fund, which was passed by voters in 2018 to address a backlog of needs across Great Falls’ 57 parks and other recreation facilities. The district raises $1.5 million annually and was meant to address a 2016 Park and Recreation master plan that identified $12.6 million in critical needs.
That master plan was created while the Natatorium was still in operation as the indoor pool, and a new facility wasn’t a priority at the time. A combined aquatics and recreation center was listed as a “visionary recommendation” behind lists of critical needs and improvement needs.
But when the Department of Defense grant came through, officials decided that committing a substantial amount of the Park Maintenance District revenue was worth it for the local match.
“Part of the master plan was that aspirational idea of an indoor swimming pool for the community, and this was an opportunity to seize that,” said Kelly, who, along with his wife, hold membership numbers 1 and 2 at Aim High Big Sky.
The city issued bonds for its $10 million match and spends about $700,000 each year out of the Park Maintenance District fund to pay off that debt. That laid the foundation for Aim High Big Sky, which also benefitted from local donations and $1 million from Scheels for the naming rights.
After going through multiple site proposals, construction began in 2021. At the grand opening in July 2024, City Commissioner Shannon Wilson (member No. 3) was first in the pool.
WHERE THE REVENUE COMES FROM
There are some die-hard indoor pool users in Great Falls. Compton said that there’s one early-morning group that regularly used the Natatorium and now swims and exercises in the early morning hours at Aim High Big Sky.
“They love it, and they see the benefits and they encourage people to come use it,” Compton said.
Member users drove revenue over the first year at Aim High Big Sky, according to sales data shared with MTFP. Sales of 12-visit memberships, as well as monthly and annual memberships, brought in about half of the facility’s revenue. But more visitors came in via daily passes. The center recorded more than 38,000 daily fee transactions in the first year, which brought in less revenue than recurring memberships but brought more people through the doors.
Paid classes and camps make up another significant portion, as well as facility rentals and special events.
“Swim lessons have been huge,” Compton said. “Those always get full for registrations.”
Given the large Department of Defense grant, participation from the Air Force and the Montana Air National Guard plays a big role in operations. Service members hold regular training sessions at the pools free of charge.
Exercise classes also attract repeat visitors. Kimberly Woodring leads Essentrics with Kimberly, a fitness and rehabilitation program aimed at older people. Woodring said that her participants followed her from the city’s older downtown rec center to a private gym and finally to Aim High Big Sky. When the classes get full, she has to move from the studio room to the gymnasium.
Woodring told MTFP that the facility is fantastic for her group. But she said she’d like to see more advertising for some of the instructor-led classes like hers. Even putting the instructors’ photos on the wall could be a reminder to visitors and would add a personal touch. After all, Aim High Big Sky isn’t the only game in town. Peak Health and Wellness, a private operation, has two locations in Great Falls and similarly has aquatics, courts, a gym and class programs.
“There’s so much potential there,” Woodring said of Aim High Big Sky. “I know they say they aren’t competing with the Peak, but they are.”
Compton said that they’ve experimented with different events that try to foster the community center aspect of Aim High Big Sky. The parking lot trunk-or-treat fall event drew long lines last fall for candy, and that lot is also the site of summer night markets in partnership with the Great Falls Farmers’ Market.
The staff is working on a future dive-in movie screening and a fall triathlon that incorporates Lions Park. Compton said that as Aim High Big Sky solidifies its staff, those people in turn help create lasting programs.
“When you have staff who have passions or something they want to try, usually those are the most successful classes,” she said.
Fundamentally, revenue from user fees will balance the budget at Aim High Big Sky. Building a user base is Compton’s top priority, though she said they’re also focused on after-hours rentals and advertising the full suite of programs at the center.
While Aim High Big Sky has unique needs, it’s still part of the Park and Recreation facility portfolio. And it’s that reflection of community interest that Compton and staff hope will guide the program menu and attract a broad range of visitors, which could put the center on surer financial footing.
“If you want to be in a class and talk to people, we have those opportunities regardless of how you look like, your abilities, how you feel,” Compton said. “This is the place for you.”
This story was originally published by Montana Free Press at montanafreepress.org.
