A multi-tank aquatic centre that includes a 25-metre pool in Azilda with a separate warm-water tank?
City staff are looking into it.
During Tuesday’s city council meeting, Ward 4 Coun. Pauline Fortin put forward a successful motion for city staff to conduct a feasibility study next year on the development of the proposed aquatics centre at the Lionel E. Lalonde Centre in Azilda.
City Leisure Services director Jeff Pafford confirmed that an aquatics centre in Azilda would align with the city’s Aquatic Service and Facility Review, which was approved on Tuesday.
In the scope of the sprawling amalgamated City of Greater Sudbury, Fortin said Azilda is geographically central, “so it’s a great location.”
The estimated cost to develop a new multi-tank aquatic centre with a pool 25 metres long is approximately $30 to $35 million, according to the city’s review.
A pool for Azilda has been talked about for decades, and a therapeutic/leisure pool was approved by city council a few years ago at a cost of $5.7 million, which was later updated to $7.65 million.
The community has raised $100,500 toward the project, and the federal government pledged $1 million in 2019. At the time, its grand opening was anticipated to take place in 2021.
The Azilda pool building had been proposed to be approximately 7,400 square feet in size, including a pool tank, deck space, change room, studio, control desk, storage and mechanical space.
Much smaller in size than the 25-metre pool now envisioned, Fortin pumped the brakes on the previous Azilda pool proposal last year until such time as the Aquatic Service and Facility Review had been released.
The pool now envisioned is something Fortin said will be much better received by the residents of Azilda, she said, adding that the single-tank pool with no deep end previously slated to move forward would have been something the community “would have been very, very disappointed with.”
Since the funding was delayed, the city has lost the $1-million in funding they’d secured from the federal government.
The project had an original projected end date of March 31, 2021, and the funding was extended twice, eventually to Aug. 11 of this year.
“In September 2024, the city was notified that the project file would be closed as construction work had not begun prior to the August 11, 2024, funding agreement expiry date, and there would be no option for an agreement extension,” a city spokesperson told Sudbury.com.
Despite this loss, Fortin said that the delay was necessary.
After all, she said, the city might now proceed with a project the community is proud of instead of something they’d likely be disappointed in.
“Hopefully we’ll get new federal funding of more dollars, or provincial funding, and you need a plan,” she said, flagging the feasibility study requested as the next logical step. “You can’t apply for anything if you don’t have a plan.”
Past Ward 4 city council member Evelyn Dutrisac has been a leading figure in the pool’s fundraising efforts for the past several years alongside a fundraising committee, and told Sudbury.com this week, “I’m fed up with studies.”
“It was approved, all ready to go, and we had the money,” she said of the past therapeutic pool effort in 2021, adding that the city should have just built what was approved.
“Our residents wanted a therapy pool to be proactive, to make sure they were keeping their health and being healthy, and we wanted to be able to pay for it,” she said. “Losing that million is very difficult.”
Although Dutrisac clarified that she’s still optimistic that something will still happen in Azilda, a larger pool carries a greater price tag.
“I’m not objecting to the larger, but can we afford it?” she asked.
A separate motion of city council approved on Tuesday will see city staff work with Laurentian University to develop a business plan for the re-opening of the Jeno Tihanyi Olympic Gold Pool, the details of which to be presented to city council members by June 2025.
The city’s Aquatic Service and Facility Review approved on Tuesday sets out a long-term goal for city aquatics facilities to 2051.
Among its recommendations is that the city has a minimum of five indoor pool amenities by 2051 (there are currently seven, including the YMCA and Laurentian University), and that two new or expanded aquatic centres are developed to replace up to four existing city pools. Increased capital investment is recommended, with the city’s five underfunded indoor pools on track to slip from fair to an overall poor state of repair by 2029. That is, except for the Onaping Pool, which the report said there is “no rationale” to continue to invest in. It’s the city’s smallest and least-used pool, and is reaching the end of its functional life.
Tyler Clarke covers city hall and political affairs for Sudbury.com.