By Ethan Ready

New downtown pool

City makes splash with accessible new pool design

Feb 20, 2020 | 11:35 AM

PRINCE GEORGE – It’s easy to see that Prince George’s new pool will be an impressive amenity to the downtown after the reveal of initial renderings of the facility.

The entire facility is designed with a particular eye for safety and accessibility, with each pool having shallow entries. They also include what’s being referred to as “pool pods” to provide people with mobility devices to enter, while the main leisure pool has a gradual entry from zero depth.

In May of 2019, the City announced that HDR Architecture would be leading the design and construction of the City’s new aquatic facility.

The main features of the pool 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 large whirlpool with two depths
• Dedicated male and female change rooms, as well as a large universal change room
• Three barrier-free shower rooms with ceiling lifts
• A sauna and steam room
• Two classrooms
• A comfortable viewing area
  Full floor plan of the new Prince George Downtown Pool expected to be ready to open to the public in the summer of 2022.

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A competition-style pool has eight lanes worth of swimming and 50 metres in length, however, Vice President of HDR Architecture Mark Hentze says they wanted to ensure that the new pool wouldn’t pull away usage from the City’s Aquatic Centre on George Paul Lane.

“What has to be conscious of in new pools, in particular, there’s the adage of ‘if you build it, they will come’, and there’s sort of a shelf life where you build a new swimming pool and give it all the bells and whistles, and it takes all the business away from everyone else, and everybody floods to that [pool] for a year or so, and then it dies off. So what we did is we worked really hard with the City to make sure that program components of the Aquatic Centre could be in compliment of the replacement Downtown Pool.”

Hentze said that the new pool will still be able to accommodate short-lane competitions and serve with the focus on recreational swimming while allowing the Aquatic Centre to stand as the City’s primary facility for swim meets.

The overall design of the facility will include a “tilted box” design, accommodating the increased height needed for the waterslide, while also then sloping towards the main entrance of the building. The entry plaza will collect water run-off into a rain garden.

The construction on the new pool is scheduled to begin later this year and the City expects the facility will open to the public by the summer of 2022. The Four Seasons will remain open until the new pool is ready for use.