Prince George City Council has approved funding for a number of improvements and upgrades to the Prince George Aquatic Centre.
City Council approved the upgrades at Monday’s meeting.
“It’s 25 years old already, and it’s one of our premiere facilities in our city,” said Director of Civic Facilities Andy Beesley.
A presentation of just some of the wear and tear the Aquatic Centre has can be found here.
The total costs for the upgrades are a little over $36 million and the repairs are broken down into four phases:
- Phase 1 – replacement of the building envelope, glazing, roof system, exterior doors, entry columns, leisure pool tiles, acoustic baffles, and DDX Control system. Addition of a dehumidification system and new electrical transformer with electrical system upgrades.
- Phase 2 – Repairs to the structural steel/columns and dive tank sparger system. Replacement of main entry soffits, curtain wall and air handling units cooling coils. Addition of energy recovery on air handling units.
- Phase 3 – Replacement of health/life safety items including deck, lobby and visitor area tile, handrails, plumbing fixtures, fire alarm system and sprinkler heads.
- Phase 4 – Replacement of moveable bulkheads, change room tiles, overhead and underwater light fixtures and emergency system lighting, in addition to interior repainting, hydronic piping reconfiguration, increased access controls, accessibility improvements, and reconfigured reception desk.
Beesley noted building another brand new aquatic centre would cost well over $100 million.
“Phase one, that is already happening, to put it in kind of crude terms, is cracking the building open,” Beesley said.
“The intent of this report is to show that rather than completing phase one and piecing it all back together again, and then sometime in the near future cracking it all back open again, there could be some efficiencies with trying to get some of the work done while the building is cracked open.”
The budget for phase one received a boost of $6.3 million from provincial grant funding, bringing the total budget for the phase to $14.88 million.
Beesley said while the budget numbers are intimidating, it would be considerably more financially efficient to do as much as possible at the same time.
“I don’t want us to be penny-wise and pound-foolish to save a little bit of money now, and then lose an enormous amount later,” said Councillor Garth Frizzell.
“What you’ve put in front of us makes sense, it is expensive, this is not something we want to do, but if we do it at another time it’s going to be far more expensive.”
“I’m having real difficulty with the amount of money we’re being asked to put forward, it’s just a stunning amount,” said Councillor Trudy Klassen.
“I’m hearing a lot of support around council for looking at our civic core plan and maybe possibly building for the first time an arts centre of some sort, and that’s going to cost a ton of money, my concern is if we say yes to this, we’re saying no to that, and I’m unwilling to do that frankly.”
City Council approved the upgrades, however the city requires approval from the public to borrow the remaining $22.15 million, and a report will be presented to Prince George City Council at the next meeting with option as to how best to fulfill that obligation.
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