Fans of the Frisco (Texas) RoughRiders will get to enjoy more than just baseball this summer at Dr Pepper Ballpark.
The Double-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers announced Thursday plans to install a 3,000-square-foot lazy river, part of a 12,000-square-foot outfield party and group hospitality area. The Choctaw Lazy River, named for Choctaw Casinos of Oklahoma, will hold 68,023 gallons of water and will be the largest lazy river in professional sports. It will have nine times more swimming area than each of the end zone pools at EverBank Field in Jacksonville, Fla., home of the NFL’s Jaguars, and will be eight times larger than the Arizona Diamondbacks’ outfield pool at Chase Field, which contains 8,500 gallons. At a depth of three feet, the Choctaw Lazy River will span nearly 175 feet.
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“We’ve been the top-drawing franchise, but we saw that it was slowly declining by 5 or 6 percent each year,” Chuck Greenberg, the general partner and CEO of the RoughRiders and former managing partner and CEO of the Rangers, told ESPN. “The Choctaw Lazy River will be a great signature piece for us.”
The lazy river won’t be available for all fans. Groups of at least 200 are eligible to reserve the entire hospitality area, including private use of the lazy river and the cabana bar and patio, for six days out of the week. The exception is Thursdays, when the RoughRiders will sell $39 Thursday Night Pool Party tickets that include full lazy river access, pre-game live music and all-you-can-eat hot dogs, bratwursts, chips, peanuts and soft drinks.
The $1.5 million project, which will be completed by early June, is being funded privately by RoughRiders ownership. The Frisco Community Development Corp. will reimburse a portion of the cost, according to the team.
