Vancouver’s park board is in hot water with the competitive swimming community after sticking to plans of reducing a 50-metre training pool at the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Aquatic Centre to 25 metres.
In February, the park board proposed a new design that would see the current 50-metre lap pool reduced to half that length. The design would also add in a leisure pool, a large hot pool, dive towers, and other aquatic and recreation amenities. Following community pushback, plans were paused and sent back to staff for a more detailed decision.
The pool was built in 1974 and in 2019, it was nearing the end of its functional lifespan with a high priority for renewal. VAC, located on Beach Avenue, serves both West End and downtown Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»residents as well as the surrounding region as a swim and dive training facility.
Since the proposed new design, many people in the swim community have been vocal about their concerns about reducing the pool.
Jeannie Lo, president of the Canadian Dolphin Swim Club and president of Swim BC, said she's disappointed the 50-metre pool is not being seriously considered.
“It speaks to lack of transparency,” she said. "It wasn't until the March 4 meeting that we were finally consulted, when there was pushback from the commissioners and they were sent back to the drawing board. That’s when we finally were invited to the table to outline our needs and our wants.”
According to , the analysis demonstrates that it is not feasible to deliver a 50-metre training pool within the existing building footprint that meets minimum aquatic industry standards.
"Exploring a 50-metre training pool and extending beyond the existing building footprint would require additional funding and revisiting the land tenure strategy,” states the report, noting the project is now pegged at $170 million, $30 million more than originally planned. In 2022, Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»voters said yes to borrowing $103 million to rebuild VAC, and the following year, city council included the project in its 2023-2026 capital plan. At that point, the cost was $140 million.
Staff reviewed the 2023-2026 capital plan and said there are limited projects with available funding that could be deprioritized to reallocate the budget needed to advance this alternative option.
Lo said the cost implication of the 50-metre pool wasn't investigated.
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place, if you just turn around and say no without exploring any options?” said Lo. “That part is deeply disappointing.”
Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Board of Parks and Recreation general manager Steve Jackson believes what is being put forward is a positive for the community.
“We've put forward a staff recommendation, which is moving forward with the project, knowing that we can deliver it, we can deliver it on budget and we can deliver it on time,” he said. "Any other pivot away from that creates all sorts of unknowns that are really difficult for me to comment on.”
Swimming in a 50-metre pool is an entirely different experience, according to Canadian Dolphin Swim Club head coach Kelly Taitinger.
“When you get to a 50-meter pool, you have to go twice as far with less push-off,” he said.
For competitive swimmers, a 25-metre pool means more pushing off from the walls instead of swimming, while a 50-metre pool requires more aerobic endurance.
“If you've ever trained in a pool, you know that it gets more crowded as it gets shorter and there's more congestion and more fights in the lane because the pool is just too short for everybody to swim in,” he explained.
According to Lo, one of their swimming alumnus is an architect who looked at the schematics and believes a 50-metre pool could still fit.
“If you're looking at the shell, of course, a 50-meter tank fits, but it's what else do you want to put in?” she said.
‘Mind-boggling' hot tub
Under the new plan with the reduced lane pool, the hot tub would be expanded from the current nine square metres to 125 square metres.
“The new hot tub is 14 times the current hot tub,” said Lo.
According to the most recent report, although the current pool does provide valuable and specialized services, the pool's cold-water temperature, depth and configuration of the lap and dive tank, combined with the facility’s age and condition, .
“Hot tubs, as far as I understand, there is no programming that you can do in a hot tub,” said Lo.
She added hot tubs do not provide health benefits for young or old people.
“The fact they prioritize such a big piece of real estate for a facility that isn’t conducive to health and safety… it’s mind-boggling,” said Lo.
Taitinger said the city needs to have a plan for the future of aquatics.
“The pool was definitely not maintained. I’ve been working here for 36 years … you just wanted to let it die,” he said.
Not only is he worried about the sport in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»but also said swimming is a life skill and people use the pool if they have injuries.
“There’s been a 50-metre pool here for almost 70 years,” he said. “The water is not warm enough to swim in the ocean and you can’t train anywhere else by a pool.”
The report states that 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 disruption to the facility and park.
“We were operating within what we know of the site constraints at the current aquatic centre, as well as our budget capacity to deliver a renewed aquatic centre,” said Jackson. “We wanted to deliver an aquatic centre that would meet the various demands across the system."
The report recommends going ahead with the Feb. 24 design and a decision is required for the project to remain on schedule and utilize the approved $103-million 2022 plebiscite funding or seek additional funding to pursue the alternative option.
Jackson said the project put forward is one he believes can be delivered within the financial means available.
“What I don't want the public and the swim community to think is that this is the park board pivoting away from the importance of 50-metre pools in our system, or the future delivery of a competition quality competition pool,” he said. "Those sites are expensive.”
He added a regional approach makes more sense.
“This is facilitating folks who are really into swimming, looking for competitive avenues, hopefully getting to the Olympics, which we're all in favour of,” he said. “The role of a single municipality providing that is a challenge when we've got numerous other key infrastructure pieces that we're trying to keep online as well.”
Capacity concerns
According to the report, VAC is operating at only 30 per cent of its potential capacity.
Taitinger refuted this number.
"I don't know why the report said it's only operating at 30 per cent capacity, because we rent space every single day of the week, and we would rent more space if we were given more space, but they said were full,” he said.
Hillcrest Community Centre’s pool is currently operating at 113 per cent of its capacity, according to the report.
The 50-metre pool at Hillcrest is allocated through club use, public use and mixed-use models.
Lo said people try to compare VAC and Hillcrest’s pool but they are very different facilities.
"Hillcrest was also built for a different purpose. The Hillcrest community wanted a leisure facility,” she said.
Many of the people living in Vancouver’s West End have condominium facilities with smaller pools and gyms. People go to VAC for the 50-metre pool specifically.
Going ahead with a 25-metre pool would "not deliver something that the city wants or the community wants," she said.
“We will have outgrown that facility before it even opens its doors," said Lo.
Jackson said the park board is keen to work with the swim clubs to adjust programming at Hillcrest to get them in the pool.
“We've communicated with them already that we believe we can likely shift some of our more leisure programming away from Hillcrest to other sites, and through that, we would enable an increased capacity of 50-metre swim time at Hillcrest,” said Jackson.
Lo challenged this, stating if the pool is operating at 113 per cent capacity, how could there be any room for them.
“How on earth are they going to get more user groups in there?” she questioned.
Meeting set for March 31
Joseph Lee lives in Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»and was a lifelong competitive swimmer.
He strongly opposes the reduction of the VAC lane to 25 m.
"As a concerned voting citizen of this great city of Vancouver, I would request or implore the commissioners to not approve the 25-metre facility,” he said. "I strongly believe this should be put to voters in the upcoming 2026 election.”
An online petition in favour of keeping the pool as is has garnered .
The plan will be considered again during a park board meeting on March 31.
