A report to the Vancouver Park Board is splashing cold water on a community campaign to ensure a 50-metre pool is included in a rebuild of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre.
The report, headed to the board next Monday, says the city should proceed as planned with a smaller 25-metre pool.
The proposed design includes the smaller lap pool, along with a leisure and teaching pool and a hot pool. The park board says the facility was designed in response to surging demand for leisure, community programming and swimming lessons as the downtown core’s population booms.
In February, park commissioners told staff to head back to the drawing board and review the possibility of including a bigger pool, after sports and community groups pushed back at the loss of the Olympic-sized facility.
The report analyzed factors including project timeline, cost, and the size of the available property, and concluded that the project would have to be put on pause for a bigger rethink if the city wanted to move forward with a bigger pool.
“It is not feasible to deliver a 50-metre training pool compliant with the BC and Federal Accessibility Act and Rick Hansen Gold Standards while meeting minimum aquatic industry standards and incorporating other existing components such as dive towers, hot pool and other aquatic and recreation amenities,” the report states.
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“Pursuing an alternative option is not recommended due to the mixed-land tenure, unknown site considerations, city-wide infrastructure deficit, operational inefficiencies, and prolonged service disruptions to the facility and park.”
Kelly Taitinger, head coach of the Canadian Dolphins Swim Club said he was “disappointed” but not surprised by the decision.
“I am hoping the city rejects the plan … it just doesn’t make sense this club has been around for 50-plus years, they have had 50-metre pools in the downtown location for probably close to 70 years,” he said.
“Building it half the size it is doesn’t make sense at all.”
Club president Jeannie Lo said the effects would be severe for swimmers, and that 15,000 people have since signed a petition calling for the bigger pool.
“It would be a shame to see our demise as a result of this closure,” she said.
“What we will likely see is a large reduction in our programming and what we can offer our swimmers as we figure out a permanent space.”
Park Board General Manager Steve Jackson said the key constraints on the rebuild are budget and the site footprint. The pool is built on land owned by both the city and the province, while adjacent land is provincially-owned.
“What we don’t know about sites to the west where we could extend is what those conditions are and what appetite the province would have to us expanding our site out that way,” he said.
“Knowing we are working with the budget available to us now and a site we could build on top of with good reliability, it would be a good foundation for an aquatic centre.”
The report found that any scope changes or project delays could put the $103 million voters approved for the pool in a 2022 plebiscite at risk. If that approval expires, voters would have to approve new money in a subsequent plebiscite — pushing the job back to at least 2027 and putting the project in competition for dollars with other priorities like a rebuild of the Kitsilano Pool.
It also states any additional delays would add $10 million to $20 million per year to the project’s overall cost. The latest project cost estimate stands at $170 million.
The report argues that the city could make up about 80 per cent of the current 50-metre swim availability by adjusting the Hillcrest Pool layout to add 428 additional weekly hours with the longer lanes.
“They said they are going to access Hillcrest, but they already say it’s 113 per cent at capacity,” Taitinger said.
Jackson said the city could make space at Hillcrest by shifting leisure programming to other city pools, which are currently under capacity.
He added that adding the leisure and teaching pools to the new Vancouver Aquatic Centre could absorb some of that demand.
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