Pool to remain open until 2010

Iqaluit’s popular but badly aging swimming pool will remain open until 2010, with a newly-negotiated lease approved by council last week.

The new lease, which comes into effect when the existing agreement expires on March 2007, includes a three per cent increase each year. The city currently pays about $180,000 annually on pool lease payments.

The new deal is far better than an earlier offer made by Nunastar, the company that owns the Astro Hill complex where the pool is located.

In January Nunastar offered the city a two-year contract with an 8.5 per cent increase each year. Council rejected that offer at the time, and requested their staff to keep negotiating.

Council hopes the new lease will give the city enough time to build a new pool.

In December city officials unveiled plans for a new aquatic centre, to be located adjacent to Joamie school, with an estimated total construction cost of $12.1 million.

The proposed design includes a five-lane pool, a leisure pool, a whirlpool and a waterslide. The facility would also include a “party room” to be rented to groups.

But this plan appears to have lost favour with city officials, who are now talking about the possibility of building a “multi-plex” facility instead.

Meanwhile, during the upcoming city elections, ratepayers will be asked whether they support allowing the city to borrow up to $12 million to build a new recreation facility.

The city has no firm proposal of what that facility will be, but finance director John Hussey, who is the borrowing plan’s lead proponent, says the city will use the pool plan as a “basis” for a new building.

All this means ratepayers have little information to judge whether the proposed recreation facility will be good value for their money or not as they go to the ballots – although Hussey says that public consultations will be held during the building’s development.

The city’s existing pool is 35 years old, built when Iqaluit’s population was only 900. It routinely closes because of problems with its aging equipment.