Repairs continue at the pool at Vancouver's Kitsilano beach on July 8, in an effort to be completed by the promised Aug. 7 opening date. Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim promises the popular 137-metre outdoor pool will open in August after public outrage over an original indefinite closure.Jimmy Jeong/The Globe and Mail
Vancouver’s city manager believed two years ago that the city’s distinctive, ocean-side swimming pool was not in dire straits after the saltwater oasis was damaged by massive tides, storm-driven seawater and logs that had turned into battering rams.
Paul Mochrie said then that an extensive assessment had concluded the pool was going to be okay after repairs, and the city reopened it late in the summer of 2022 and then again the next summer starting in June.
But new leaks and cracks kept appearing in Kitsilano pool, unique in North America for its size – almost triple the standard pool length – and for its stunning downtown and mountain views. And then suddenly, its future, not just for this summer but beyond, was thrown into doubt. The park board announced on June 5 that the pool would close indefinitely.
Last week, spurred on by massive public outrage, Mayor Ken Sim announced the city had called on an outside expert to find a repair solution that should see the pool reopen on Aug. 7.
But it’s not clear what the longer-term future will be for the 45-year-old structure, one that has seen almost 200,000 visits in some years despite being open only three or four months.
The pool’s plight is a message about the city’s state of health over all, one that other Canadian cities also have heard the past few months as major pieces of infrastructure or community attractions, from Calgary’s main water pipe to Ontario’s Science Centre, have broken down or been declared unusable.
Even with Mr. Sim’s last-minute rescue, critics of the city’s management say the saga of Kits pool shows how nice-to-have infrastructure gets pushed down the ever-expanding maintenance priority list until it causes a public uproar.
“It makes it sound as if the city is in decline – it doesn’t have the money to keep a pool open,” said Brennan Bastyovanszky, the chair of the Vancouver Park board, adding that the city’s real estate and facilities management branch already has $300-million of deferred maintenance.
City hall took over legal responsibility from the park board for maintenance at 196 park properties in 2014, from golf courses to park fieldhouses to pools – including Kits pool.
A worker stands in the water at Kitsilano Pool in July, 2020.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
The Globe and Mail reviewed city memos, reports, documents, repair contracts and budgets of the past two years to piece together why the Kits pool was not a priority after the January, 2022, damage.
In June, 2022, as the city was preparing its draft capital plan for the next four years, there was little mention of Kits pool, though other pools in the city got attention.
One paragraph in the 189-page document noted that council wanted staff to report back on possible budget allocations for an immediate repair to the Kits facility and the potential cost of upgrading the pool to ensure it could withstand extreme weather.
In their response, city staff said they were already doing structural and geotechnical studies and that they would come back with options in the midterm report on the capital plan.
That midterm report went to council late last month, two years later.
The only reference to Kits pool issues is a single line noting that $5-million was needed for repairs and capital maintenance, along with a feasibility study.
The Globe’s search for repair contracts or studies found two items since January, 2022. One was to the AME Consulting Group for $194,000 in October, 2022, for a general pool-system assessment program. The other was a $37,000 contract to Scott Special Project for a “Kits pool supply pipe investigation.”
The city’s communications department said a freedom of information request would be needed to get details about repairs or studies beyond those publicly available numbers.
A manager with Vancouver’s Park Board was the first to flag how serious the situation was in December, 2023, with a public report – one that now seems like a cry for help to the city – saying that the pool was leaking at a rate of 30,000 litres an hour. The leak is now up to 1.7 million litres a day, as various efforts at repair have never seemed to provide a complete fix for all problems.
Vancouver Coastal Health declared pool safety was compromised because the continuing leakage meant staff could never get a stable amount of sanitizing chemicals into the water.
The resulting public outrage prompted an urgent motion from city council late last month finally declaring Kitsilano pool a priority amenity and outlining plans on how to keep it going, including asking for money from private businesses and charities.
An internal, July 4 memo from deputy city manager Armin Amrolia said new teams started work on June 30 to look for pipe problems and to address repairs. The memo, obtained by The Globe, concluded repairs could be complete by July 24 and the pool could potentially open within two weeks after testing and filling.
Green Party park commissioner Tom Digby said the whole situation is a demonstration of why having an independent board is better – the board can fight for park facilities.
For the city, the park board and its urgent issues become “just one of its many priorities,” said Mr. Digby, who has toured the pool site in person and seen the damage.
But Mr. Sim and his staff, who have already committed to abolishing the park board, insist the Kits pool debacle is a sign of why the park board needs to go, because two different entities are overlapping unproductively on managing the facilities.
“We want to get rid of things slipping through the cracks,” Mr. Sim said. He declined to respond to why city staff overlooked the pool’s problems the past two years, saying, “we’re not assigning blame.”
The Vancouver Society for Promotion of Outdoor Pools, a lobby group of Kitsilano swimmers originally formed with the aim of keeping the pool open for more months of the year, is now fighting to keep the pool open at all. In the alternative, they’d like a new one built on higher ground – and possibly with a retractable roof to allow for swimming 12 months a year.
“Not having Kits pool open is a real issue,” said one of the group’s founding members, Anthony Abrahams. “This is a globally recognized pool. It’s more of an experience than just a pool.”