Ramaker fights the freeze for new water park

The structural component of the water park's slides is built for the children's wading pool.

Yogi Bear would be proud.

And so are Ramaker & Associates Inc., Sauk City, and Badger Swimpools Inc., Prairie du Sac, as they near completion of a 100,000-square-foot water park at Yogi Bear's Jellystone Park Camp Resort in Warrens.

The project features two 30-person whirlpools, a 575-foot action river that flows through a 3,600-square-foot wave pool, a bathhouse, two machine rooms, a concessions building and a 3-foot- to 5-foot-deep activity pool with basketball hoops and provisions for future installation of a water slide.

The project team has hit the job's home stretch. All the pool vessels have been poured, the wading pool feature is installed, the bathhouse and equipment buildings are substantially completed and the deck and fencing are under way.

The water park project features two 30-person whirlpools.

And with the majority of the heavy lifting behind them, the project team can finally look back at a difficult winter of construction, said Daryl Matzke, Ramaker's director of civil engineering. A variety of factors forced Ramaker and Badger to flip-flop the typical construction schedule for a project like this.

"It's just the nature of pool construction in Wisconsin that you only have from Memorial Day to Labor Day to do construction," Matzke said. "But we could only do construction through the winter."

There was no way the project team could get on site to start construction last summer, considering that June through August are the campground's primary moneymaking months. And the team lost what amounted to an additional month of construction when it had to wait until the end of September for the completion of the Cranberry Festival, which draws about 100,000 people to the Warrens area.

"So we did the construction of an outdoor water park in the coldest months of the year," Matzke said.

With a hard deadline of Memorial Day, Badger and Ramaker took a phased approach to the design and construction.

"We were designing on the go," Matzke said. "To meet a short construction schedule, the design/build approach allowed us to design it while it was under construction."

With Memorial Day fast approaching and the ground thawing out, the project is right on target.

"It's pretty cool," Matzke said. "It's the first time that a campground has taken a step like this. Usually it's just the hotels."

- Chris Thompson