Centennial pool will close for good in January.
City council voted to accept a staff recommendation Tuesday that the pool be shut down after the current fall session of programming is finished Jan. 4.
The 50-year-old facility is in need of over $1.2 million in mechanical and accessibility upgrades.
If those upgrades were done, the pool would also need to close for a year while they were done.
Council voted 7-4 in favour of the staff recommendation to close the pool.
Ward 5 councillor Cathy Downer argued for the pool to remain open, saying that “$1.2 million is actually a deal when you put it in contrast to what new facilities cost, which is tens of millions of dollars.”
Downer lamented the “donut effect” of city services, with facilities on the outer edges of the city and nothing in the middle.
“It’s actually not a bad deal,” Downer said of a $1.2 million in capital upgrades.
“I don’t know why we’re not making this investment in our community to make sure our recreational facilities are more evenly distributed in the city.”
Recreation and parks manager Heather Flaherty said the $1.2 million would only be a “Band-Aid on the facility, which would not be required to meet the needs of the aquatic community when a new south end community centre is open.
It is not yet known when a south end community centre will be built, but staff said Tuesday that if council approves the budget recommendation this fall, work on the new south end centre could start in late 2020 and be open two years later.
Flaherty said use of Centennial pool has been declining.
“We have the two pools that we need to meet the aquatic needs (of the city) right now,” Flaherty said.
