Park board approves 25-metre pool for renovated Vancouver Aquatic Centre

Akshay Kulkarni · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 01, 2025 9:40 AM EDT | Last Updated: 30 minutes ago

A bulk of Vancouver Park Board commissioners voted Monday to approve a unit program to instal a 25-metre excavation arsenic portion of a renovation to the Vancouver Aquatic Centre, successful a saga that has present lasted implicit a month.

Staff had enactment guardant a $170-million connection past month to renovate the West End facility near Sunset Beach, which included a 25-metre thigh pool, dive platforms, a leisure pool and different recreational amenities. 

However, aquatics clubs were overwhelmingly against the unit proposal, with implicit 70 speakers telling parkland committee commissioners that not having an Olympic-sized, 50-metre excavation would bounds competitory opportunities.

That prompted a bulk of commissioners to inquire unit to look astatine the 50-metre excavation option, with unit fixed a period to bash so.

WATCH | Park committee unit accidental 50-metre excavation not imaginable wrong existent footprint: 

However, successful a study published past week and yet passed connected Monday, unit said that a 50-metre excavation enactment was simply intolerable without much funding, and would besides mean the gathering footprint would person to beryllium expanded.

"Due to the mixed-land tenure, pursuing an alternate enactment and expanding into Sunset Beach Park would necessitate solution with the Province and the big First Nations," reads the report.

"Additional assessments would beryllium required, including archeology, geology, ungraded stability, sea-level rise, among others."

Park committee unit said it wasn't feasible to present a 50-metre excavation wrong the existing gathering footprint, portion besides gathering manufacture standards for attraction and accessibility.

The overwhelming bulk of speakers who came to the park committee gathering Monday were against the unit proposal. Meanwhile, commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky's amendment to the proposal, which would person asked unit to look into expanding the centre footprint, was defeated.

"While we afloat admit the interaction connected our existing swimming assemblage from the exclusion of the 50-metre pool, this proposal looks to champion equilibrium against the hazard of work losses by limiting our downtime lone to the task operation schedule," said parkland committee wide manager Steve Jackson connected Monday.

According to the plan, renovation enactment connected the Vancouver Aquatic Centre could statesman by the extremity of 2026, and it would reopen successful 2029.

WATCH | Swim clubs upset implicit 25-metre excavation successful unit proposal: 

Pool astatine extremity of lifespan

The aging Vancouver Aquatic Centre made headlines in March 2022 aft a ample portion of the building's facade fell off. The installation was built successful 1974 and is described arsenic being astatine "the extremity of its functional lifespan"

In the 2022 municipal election, voters supported the renewal of the aquatic centre successful a plebiscite, with the ballot requiring operation to commence by the extremity of 2026 arsenic portion of a $103-million backing plan.

Green parkland committee commissioner Tom Digby said past week that the unit study showed that the existent usage complaint of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre was astatine astir 30 per cent.

"It's due to the fact that it's often successful the afloat competitory format of 50 metres, and that does not let a precocious density of users," helium told Gloria Macarenko, big of CBC's On The Coast. "It allows a tiny density of precise progressive users."

Digby argued that each different pools successful the metropolis were astatine overmuch higher usage rates and the parkland committee was already squeezing wealth from the remainder of the strategy to money the aquatic centre renovation.

Park committee unit have said that, aft the 25-metre excavation renovation program passed, they would summation the clip astatine which different pools successful the metropolis are tally astatine 50-metre configurations, including at Hillcrest excavation successful Queen Elizabeth Park.

They had said if commissioners had voted down the connection which includes the 25-metre pool, they would have had to spell backmost to the drafting board, question a caller plebiscite and find backing successful the 2027-30 superior plan.