Vancouver Aquatic Centre rebuild could include 50-metre pool – but only if further money raised

The future of the much talked about Vancouver Aquatic Centre is to be decided in a week - unless more funds are raised, a rebuild looks uncertain.

Local swim groups say they feel let down ahead of a park board decision on the future of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre next week.

On Monday, the park board will receive a report from staff which will recommend going forward with the initial plan to build a 25-metre pool facility – or put the replacement project on hold until money can be raised to build a 50-metre pool.

It comes with the facility quite literally falling apart in recent years and fears it might have to be closed temporarily or permanently as it reaches the end of its usable life.

“We’re not ruling out a 50-metre pool in our system,” Park Board General Manager Steve Jackson told CTV News on Monday. “We just have to look to future sites and future renewals for this, because this site and this timeline just won’t accommodate it.”

But for swim clubs, they feel as if they haven’t been heard in their push for the new facility to keep the Olympic-length pool in the design.

“We would like a decision, but at this point I don’t feel it’s responsible of the city and the park board to proceed with the plan for a 25-metre plus leisure pool at a cost of 170 million [dollars] and growing, when even as soon as we start building, that pool is not going to be sufficient to service this community,” Canadian Dolphin Swim Club president Jeannie Lo told CTV News on Monday outside the facility.

If the new facility doesn’t have a 50-metre pool it would also be a problem for competitive lifesaving.

“We need the distance,” said Phil Skinder, the president and founder of the Pacific Lifesaving Club. “We need the conditioning, we need the fitness, we need to test the prospective lifesavers and lifeguards to see if they can get to that distance.”

Skinder added the fact the park board is considering relocating 50-metre activities to Hillcrest is a concern because it’s a warm water pool – which could lead to overheating – unlike the cold water at the VAC.

The park board says there’s a range of reasons why a bigger aquatic centre with a longer pool can’t be built with the money available at the site of the existing facility.

“You’re right next to the Burrard bridge,” Park Board chair Laura Christensen told CTV News. “It’s a very constrained site from a geotechnical perspective. It’s really difficult to build a bigger facility on that site. The easiest thing we can do is build within the current footprint.”

Going beyond the footprint would require more land, and more money. The park board doesn’t have a formal estimate for what that would cost, but Jackson suggested it could be in the tens of millions of dollars.

The staff report will be presented to park board commissioners on Monday next week, with local swim groups planning to attend and voice their displeasure.