Aurora dives into possible options for new pool

New SARC pool would be 'drawing card to attract families to this world class community'

Yorkregion.com
August 4, 2020

With high demand for pool time in Aurora limiting capacity, swimmers with the Aurora Ducks club are shuffled between half a dozen pools for their training.

The swimmers, aged six to 19, spend time at the municipal Aurora Family Leisure Complex and Stronach Aurora Recreation Complex as well as pools at St. Andrew’s College and the private Champion Swimming on Industrial Parkway.

For needed long-course training, they travel to 50-metre pools in Markham and sometimes Scarborough.

“It’s not ideal. We can work with it because we have adapted but it’s not ideal for sure,” said club president Paul Lau, adding the Ducks turn away 20 to 40 swimmers annually because of limited pool availability.

As Aurora dives into determining its aquatic future, he is hoping the town will choose an option that will provide his swimmers with a home base.

“It would be awesome. It would be so much better, so much more convenient for everyone, the staff, parents, kids, to have a home for the club,” he said.

The town is looking at a number of aquatic options and is seeking feedback from residents and stakeholders in August before presenting a preferred option to council in October or November, Robin McDougall, director of community services, said.

The town could do nothing, further limiting access to programming as Aurora continues to grow.

Aurora resident Dan Thompson, former president of both Swim Canada and Swim Ontario and a member of Aurora’s Sports Hall of Fame, is opposed to the status quo.

“To me, doing nothing is not an option because every pool we ever built has been at over capacity from Day One,” said Thompson, whose hopes of competing in the 100-metre butterfly in the 1980 Olympics were dashed when Canada boycotted the Games in Moscow.

A few options for a new pool are on the table and would have community-wide benefits, according to town-hired consultant Stuart Isaac, of the Isaac Sports Group from Michigan.

The first three options involve building a new pool at SARC in the rapidly growing area of Wellington and Leslie streets.

The first would see a 25-metre pool, similar to the existing pool, at a cost of almost $24 million.

The second choice is a 50-metre training pool for almost $30 million.

The third option would be a 50-metre event pool able to seat up to 900 spectators and host regional, provincial and small national meets. It comes with a price tag of about $40 million.

Built near Hwy. 404 and close to Aurora’s two new hotels, either of the 50-metre pools would bring in rent from swim clubs from surrounding communities.

The event pool would also see millions of dollars in economic spinoffs for Aurora’s hotels, restaurants and stores, Isaac said.

The fourth option is to build a new aquatic/recreation facility at the South End of town.

While it would serve an underserviced area, it would cost between $8-$15 million more and Richmond Hill would reap many benefits of economic spinoffs.

While it may look like building a new pool caters to swim clubs, it would actually result in existing pools being adapted to accommodate more programming for the broader community, according to Isaac and Thompson.

It would also allow the town to make a splash with innovative aquatic opportunities such as providing an inflatable obstacle course, climbing wall and zip lines, they said.

Like Lau, Thompson wants to see Aurora build a 50-metre event pool at SARC.

“I would be proud and I feel this would be a drawing card to attract families to this world class community. SARC is a good facility but I think this would take Aurora and SARC to the next level,” said Thompson, a salesperson with Myrtha Pools Canada, a potential bidder on the project.