Prince George’s new downtown pool is moving through the halfway point of construction.
The focus of the work, which is scheduled to be completed by fall 2022, is also shifting from the outside to the interior, the City said in a press release issued Friday.
This past week, crews were forming the concrete basins that will encompass the new pool tanks, finishing the change rooms, building additional walls and roofing, and installing insulation and electrical components.
Work scheduled for this fall includes pool water tank testing, window installation, and working on the exterior cladding.
Features include a six-lane, 25-metre lap pool, a four-lane 25-metre teaching pool with warmer water and shallow depth, a leisure pool with a lazy river, beach entry, and play features, a large waterslide with a run-off lane, a“Ninja-Cross” obstacle course, dedicated male and female change rooms, as well as a large universal change room, sauna and steam room and rooms for lessons and trainingooms for lessons and training
The pool tanks will feature shallow entries and “pool pods” to provide people with mobility devices to enter. The facility will also have improved lines of sight for lifeguards to increase safety for patrons and the change rooms will open onto the shallowest ends of the pools to decrease the likelihood of falls into deep water.
The project is budgeted to cost $35 million for the pool design and construction.
During a referendum in 2017, residents approved a $35-million loan to construct the replacement for the Four Seasons Pool. In 2020, the federal and provincial governments announced $10 million in funding support – the largest federal/provincial investment in Prince George infrastructure in about a decade.
In February, city council approved the addition of the “Ninja Cross” obstacle course to the pool at a cost of $500,000. In the same meeting, council also resolved to use the additional funding to reduce the project debt. Consequently, the loan for Prince George’s new pool stands at $25.5 million.
The project is roughly on budget at this time.
The exception is the demolition costs of old sites including costs associated with the unpredicted removal of unstable soils in the area of the pool tanks and the remediation of a deficient primer on the structural steel components as has previously been reported. The City is pursuing reimbursement of the $1 million extra cost of the primer remediation.
