Big Plans In the Works For City In 2015

Swimmers, soccer players and visitors to downtown Yakima will see some major improvements in 2015.

Yakima City Manager Tony O'Rourke says the city will have a number of public/private partnership agreements in place in the new year, including an agreement to build a new soccer complex on vacant property south of the airport.

"We'll have an agreement in place with the YMCA to build a new aquatics complex and then we'll have the engineering for the plaza with construction starting hopefully this time next year," O'Rourke says.

The aquatics facility will be built through a partnership with the YMCA, which O'Rourke says prefers Chesterly Park as the site for the center. He says all the plans will require no new taxes because the partnerships have been formed to include private money.