A $250 million water park poised to call the Mall of America home received some extra wind in its sails on Monday night.
The Bloomington City Council approved the design plans for the facility set to take up 335,000 square feet of the Mall of America's north side. City planner Mike Centinario told the Council that studies continue on how the water park will impact traffic and parking.
"This area in the South Loop is probably one that's been studied the most in terms of traffic," Centinario said. "There is a traffic study that's ongoing and any adjustments made to signalization and optimizing those systems would be done."
Developers stilll need to secure funding for the project, but that could be done as early as next spring. Centinario told the council there's plenty of work being done to ensure the facility stays in line with Bloomington's environmental goals.
"They anticipate in implementing a greywater system so as much water as they can catch would be used for irrigating plant life on site," he said. "I believe it could also be used for flushing toilets and those sorts of uses."
Other plans for the water park include a hotel, a skyway system connecting all of the amentities together, and a parking complex to handle increased traffic.
Construction could begin as soon as 2020, with a grand opening in the spring of 2022.