Park board commissioners split on the future of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre

What happened: In the latest volley in the back-and-forth debate on the future of the Vancouver Aquatic Centre (VAC), park board and city staff are doubling down on their recommendation that the lap pool’s length be downsized, from the current 50 metres to 25 metres in the new facility.

• Staff said a larger pool isn’t feasible due to funding constraints and the size of the site.  

Background: The 51-year-old pool has quite literally been crumbling over the past few years. 

In 2019 the previous park board made the renewal of a “large scale” pool at the VAC site a priority. Then, as part of the 2023-2026 Capital Budget, the previous city council approved a phased renewal of the facility, including a 50m pool. During the election later that year, voters authorized council – by way of a plebiscite – to borrow $103 million for “replacement, renewal, or rehabilitation,” of the facility. 

• It wasn’t until 2025 that commissioners or the public were made aware the pool would be downsized in the new facility, multiple commissioners confirmed with Vancity Lookout.

The details: An analysis by city staff from the Real Estate and Facilities Management department, along with park board staff and outside architects, said they decided to pivot the renewal plans, away from a 50m pool, for several reasons. It’s essentially a funding issue, according to Commissioner Scott Jensen. 

“Financial constraints are really what's moving the needle,” in the recommendation to scale back the pool’s size, Jensen said. 

$140 million – including the $103 million authorized by plebiscite – has already been allocated toward the new VAC facility in the current capital budget. But staff say it will cost $30 million more (about $22 million of which would need to come from the city) just to build the facility with the smaller 25m pool. 

• Including a 50-metre pool in the current design would cost an additional $50-100 million, Green Commissioner Tom Digby told Vancity Lookout. 

Digby emphasized the importance of the leisure pool that’s currently planned in the new facility, and noted that the facility couldn’t include a leisure pool and a 50m training pool without a significant expansion of the site.

“You cannot get a whole lot of swimmers in a 50m tank at the same time, compared to a small leisure pool,” meaning – between the leisure and 25m pools – capacity and usage can be at least doubled from what it is currently, Digby said. 

• The VAC operates at the lowest capacity out of the city’s nine indoor pool facilities, according to a staff report. The facility doesn't currently have a leisure pool.

Staff overreach?: “The decision to move away from a 50-meter pool, that's a major policy decision… so the city [staff] have come back and made those decisions without following the direction of the board,” Commissioner Brennan Bastyovanszky told Vancity Lookout. 

Bastyovanszky feels the city is withholding the necessary funds and overstepping its jurisdiction in its involvement with the recommendation for a 25m pool. 

• “They're not meant to do that. That is undermining the democratic institution of the park board… in this case, the city has taken that over,” he said. 

Jensen feels differently, saying he didn’t see the city’s involvement with any critical eye. “[Staff] are ultimately accountable to what their budget numbers provide to them,” Jensen said.

When commissioners were onboarded in 2022, Jensen said “the understanding was, with whatever you build, it's going to have to reflect the limitations for that space [and budget constraints].”

Plan pushback: At the February board meeting when this pivot was presented, three commissioners, including Bastyovanszky and ABC’s Jas Virdi and Angela Haer, successfully brought an amendment for staff to reconsider the design to include a larger pool. 

• Commissioners Digby and Jensen voted against the amendment. 

The reduced pool size has gotten significant public pushback, forcing the board to extend the meeting over two days. In particular, competitive sports programs that use the current pool would be impacted by the change, according to CBC. 

“It'll kill all the sports that are done there now [like water polo] and the swim clubs that have been there for 50 years,” Bastyovanszky said.

•  A petition for a 50m pool has gained well over 14,000 signatures.

Part of the staff report includes a provision to move 50m training availability to Hillcrest Community Centre, expanding time for swim club and public access from 84 to 512 hours per week.  

Zoom out: The city — responsible for maintaining park board facilities since 2014 — has deferred a total of $347 million in maintenance as of 2024. That means already aging park board infrastructure, like buildings, deteriorate more rapidly. With 61 per cent of park board assets in poor condition, renewal projects big and small are now competing for limited dollars at the same time.

By-election promise: On Thursday, ABC Vancouver announced they’re committing to building a new 50m pool in South Vancouver. 

• The announcement was short on details, like where the new pool would be built, how much it would cost, or how it would be funded. 

Thought bubble: It’s a nice idea. But also, it’s pretty blatantly a splashy, opportunistic election promise that ABC can tack their candidates’ names on. 

Any potential new pool facility would require many years of work to achieve — as evidenced by the current VAC renewal — and is unrealistic in the partial year-and-a-half term that ABC’s Ralph Kaisers and Jaime Stein are seeking. 

Moreover, given that the park board has not set this idea as a priority project, the announcement presupposes the city council’s jurisdiction over parks and recreation, which is still very much up in the air. 

What’s next: If commissioners don’t approve the new facility with a shorter pool, the renewal project would need to be put on hold until at least 2027, staff said. This would require funding from the next capital plan and a renewed plebiscite commitment from the public, unless the city decided to reallocate significant funding this year. 

• “City staff are unable to comment on any financial or budget related matters, as the additional funding would be considered by Council,” depending on the outcome of Monday’s park board meeting, a city spokesperson told Vancity Lookout.

If the project were to be delayed in hopes of securing that funding – and physically expanded to include a 50m and leisure pool – it would expose the project to various risks. Those risks, including unknown site conditions, could result in cost escalations of $10-20 million per year, according to staff.

• Bastyovanszky told Vancity Lookout he’s willing to take the risks posed by a delay.

Jensen said if the park board can somehow get the additional funding, “that would be amazing,” but he isn’t optimistic that will happen given the conclusions of the recent staff report, which found extra funds available in the park board's budget are limited.

“Without additional funding, I do not want to see that facility sit any longer in the condition that it’s in,” Jensen told Vancity Lookout, adding that he’s going into Monday’s decision with an open mind. 

Digby hasn’t made up his mind either. “If there's a potential for $50-100 million [from the city], then I could see deferring it on Monday and saying, ‘Okay, let's make that happen.’ But otherwise, I think we've got to get rolling with the 25m [pool] and move all the 50m swimmers [to Hillcrest], despite their unhappiness with it,” Digby said. 

Regardless of whether they choose the 25 or 50 metre option, commissioners will need more money from city council — it’s just a question of how much they think they can get.

• Best cartoon: The folks over at City Hall Watch had their own tongue-in-cheek idea for an affordable new 50-metre pool.