Calls for audit of new Vancouver Aquatic Centre decision with a 25-metre pool | Daily Hive

Calls for independent audit of Vancouver Aquatic Centre redevelopment decision with a 25-metre pool

2025 concept of the new Vancouver Aquatic Centre. (MJMA Architecture & Design/Acton Ostry Architects/Vancouver Park Board)

A Vancouver Park Board commissioner is asking the City of Vancouver’s independent auditing team to examine how Park Board and City staff arrived at the controversial redevelopment design to replace the Vancouver Aquatic Centre’s 50-metre competition swimming pool with a smaller 25-metre lap pool for the new facility’s primary tank.

Park Board commissioner Scott Jensen of the Vancouver Liberals civic party has submitted a member motion to formally invite the City’s Office of the Auditor General to conduct a performance audit of the planning and decision-making process behind the project.

In the motion to be deliberated this week, which is expected to see approval, Jensen argues that the scale and implications of the change — from a full 50-metre, Olympic-sized pool to a shorter 25-metre configuration — warrant outside scrutiny. The motion states that the shift would affect service levels, public access, and long-term operating and capital costs tied to the facility.

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The request comes amid ongoing debate within the community of pool users and West End residents about the future of the waterfront aquatic centre at Sunset Beach Park.

The motion asks Park Board commissioners to formally invite the Office of the Auditor General to conduct a performance audit, which could review the analysis, assumptions, and internal decision processes that led to the recommendation for the smaller lap swimming pool.

Jensen’s motion also frames the proposed audit as an opportunity to gather lessons for upcoming decisions on other major aquatic facilities, including the strategy for building a new replacement Kitsilano Outdoor Pool.

But the motion does not pause planning work on the project, which is expected to enter the construction procurement phase later this year, with demolition work on the existing facility possibly beginning as early as the end of 2026. In December 2025, the City’s Development Permit Board — comprised of City staff — approved the project’s development permit application. During the public meeting, many of the same opponents who had spoken against the project at Park Board and City Council meetings earlier in the year used the opportunity to voice their concerns again.

vancouver aquatic centre 2025 design new

2025 concept of the new Vancouver Aquatic Centre. (MJMA Architecture & Design/Acton Ostry Architects/Vancouver Park Board)

2025 concept of the new Vancouver Aquatic Centre. (MJMA Architecture & Design/Acton Ostry Architects/Vancouver Park Board)

This motion follows recent disclosures of internal Park Board and City staff communications that have raised questions about how the preferred design concept was determined before it was presented to Park Board commissioners and Vancouver City Council earlier in 2025.

Advocacy organization Protecting Our Vancouver Aquatic Centre Society pointed to internal emails suggesting senior City bureaucratic management — not to be confused for any elected officials — influenced the direction of the design early in the planning process. This is an allegation that has intensified calls for greater transparency.

Documents obtained through a discovery process and published by the advocacy group indicate that deputy City manager Armin Amrolia intervened during early planning discussions about the facility’s redesign. According to the emails, Amrolia instructed City staff and consultants to develop a concept with a smaller leisure-focused pool for its main tank rather than maintaining a full Olympic-sized, competition-length facility.

In one exchange dated March 2024, the facilities planning director briefed senior management on five different potential redevelopment concepts under review, including options that retained competition swimming and diving, expanded the footprint, and reused the existing structure. Those possibilities included three options that would keep a competition-length pool.

Shortly afterward, Amrolia responded, asking the municipal government’s planning team and third-party architectural design consultants — MJMA Architecture & Design/Acton Ostry Architects — to focus instead on an alternative emphasizing leisure amenities and eliminating the diving tank and competition pool. The directive effectively shifted the project’s scope, with support from Park Board general manager Steve Jackson and then-City manager Paul Mochrie.

A follow-up email from City staff planning the project indicated that work on the previously studied options had been paused while the team adjusted to the new direction outlined by the City’s senior management.

2025 concept of the new Vancouver Aquatic Centre. (MJMA Architecture & Design/Acton Ostry Architects/Vancouver Park Board)

The correspondence has sparked renewed debate about how key decisions regarding the new aquatic centre project were made. Critics argue the emails suggest senior City staff narrowed the project’s options well before elected officials in both the Park Board and City Council had the opportunity to weigh alternatives.

Supporters of the campaign to keep a 50-metre pool in the redevelopment say the internal correspondence within the municipal government reinforce long-standing concerns that the downsized facility was effectively predetermined behind the scenes.

But unlike some previous public consultations for other projects, there was also no prior public consultation on a potential major change in direction for the Vancouver Aquatic Centre redevelopment until extensive work was completed to support a recommendation to Park Board commissioners for consideration and approval.

The aquatic centre project has been contentious since February 2025, when Park Board staff first publicly released the proposed design concept for a 169,000 sq. ft. redevelopment with a 25-metre, eight-lane lap swimming, a leisure pool with a lazy river, and a deep diving tank, as well as a hot pool, steam and sauna rooms, and a fitness gym. All of these elements would be constructed within the existing facility’s exact footprint to help reduce costs.

This did not align with the City’s campaign materials ahead of October 2022 civic election, when voters approved a plebiscite question on the ballot form that sought the permission of residents to borrow $103 million to help cover a portion of the new aquatic centre project’s construction cost. The campaign materials mentioned that such a facility would include a 50-metre pool.

The existing facility’s 50-metre pool is heavily used by major swim clubs — with youth comprising of a major portion of their memberships — and other community and recreational organizations. The approach was met with immense backlash; these clubs and organizations assert that the removal of the 50-metre pool would be devastating for the training needs of their members, elite athletes, and their overall programs, as there is currently a lack of 50-metre pools not only within the city but across the Metro Vancouver region, with existing facilities seeing very high usage. Park Board staff previously asserted that Hillcrest Centre’s existing 50-metre pool could temporarily accommodate these clubs and organizations by relocating the facility’s existing programs that do not need a 50-metre pool to other pools in the city — until a new 50-metre pool is built elsewhere in the city.

Last year, Park Board staff and the project’s architects asserted that a modern 50-metre, Olympic-sized competition pool would require much more space than the current aquatic centre footprint, including a few additional metres for both flush gutters and two moveable bulkheads, which enables the large tank to accommodate a wider range of uses.

Additionally, in order to host training and competitions, there are also optimal pool deck width requirements, which would grow the footprint size by a few more metres.

Park Board staff have previously argued that delaying the project to revisit plans for a 50-metre pool would trigger significant cost escalation — not only from construction market inflation tied to delays, but also from major added expenses associated with a larger building footprint, increased geotechnical challenges, and uncertainties related to the potential presence of Indigenous artefacts in the area.

vancouver aquatic centre technical design

March 2025 configuration comparisons for Vancouver Aquatic Centre redevelopment. (MJMA Architecture & Design)

March 2025 configuration comparisons for Vancouver Aquatic Centre redevelopment. (MJMA Architecture & Design)

The redevelopment project was expedited as a capital plan priority after a March 2022 incident, when there was a partial collapse of the exterior wall near the main entrance.

Then in November 2025, the facility was suddenly closed for about three weeks, after a piece of concrete fell from the ceiling and into one of the pool lanes. During the closure, a safety investigation was conducted, and precautionary ceiling netting was installed.

If the project is delayed to address these concerns, according to Park Board staff, it would also risk missing the 2022 plebiscite requirement to begin construction by the end of 2026, potentially forcing the project to return to voters for approval through a new plebiscite question on the October 2026 civic election ballot, and possibly impacting the timeline of the Kitsilano Outdoor Pool redevelopment. In early 2025, Park Board staff suggested it would take at least another year for the architects and in-house teams to redesign the Vancouver Aquatic Centre project with a 50-metre pool.

However, Protecting Our Vancouver Aquatic Centre Society alleges Park Board and City staff disregarded a consultant’s 2023 feasibility report on rehabilitating the existing facility. Over the coming days and weeks, the group plans to release more communications and documents retrieved through their discovery process.

The group is pursuing a legal challenge against the Park Board, asking the B.C. Supreme Court to order the Park Board to revisit its plans and design a 50-metre pool — arguing that this commitment was a legally binding promise made through the plebiscite. Park Board staff, however, have previously stated in public meetings that there is no legal impediment to proceeding with a 25-metre pool.

The group has raised more than $51,000 through nearly 500 online crowdfunding donations toward covering the costs of its retained legal firm, which filed the lawsuit on Aug. 18, 2025.

It remains to be seen whether this lawsuit, if successful, could delay the project, and ultimately force the municipal government to rewind on its significant work to date on a facility with a 25-metre pool as its main tank.

To address the shortage of modern 50-metre pools capable of elite training and competitions, Park Board commissioners subsequently endorsed a move to explore building a new aquatic centre with such a pool size within South Vancouver. But realizing such a facility could be many years away, with the municipal government facing many competing prioritizes with aging and under-sized community and recreation facilities across the city.

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