The renovated pool that has reopened as part of a recreation centre project that includes an indoor velodrome has scored a historic designation. The City of Edmonton declared the Peter Hemingway Aquatic Centre a municipal historic resource on Tuesday, the day the 56-year-old pool reopened as part of the new Coronation Park Sports and Recreation Centre. It had been closed for close to six years, starting in March 2020 due to COVID-19 public health restrictions, then for renovation work that began in the fall of 2021. “Peter Hemingway was a visionary in his time, and his influence on architectural design in the city was significant,” David Johnston, a heritage planner with the city’s heritage conservation section, said in a media release. “Hemingway used the beauty and sometimes harshness of the prairie to influence his designs. That’s reflected in the way Peter Hemingway Aquatic Centre blends into the landscape but also stands out as a unique structure.” Work to rehabilitate the pool included upgrades to its pool basin and its mechanical, structural and electrical systems, replacement of the glass curtain wall and lighting, and the addition of a cold plunge pool and an elevator. The aquatic centre opened in 1970 as the Coronation Pool and was renamed in 2005 to honour Hemingway. For the pool’s design, he won a Massey Medal for Architecture, a national honour, two years after he scored one for another city structure, the Stanley Engineering Building. Stanley Engineering later changed its name to Stantec. In 2012, the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada recognized the pool with an award for its national significance. The heritage designation for the aquatic centre is the 195th given by city council since the program began in 1985. A municipal historic resource designation protects structures from demolition. Other notable local structures Hemingway designed include the Muttart Conservatory; Sherwood Park’s Strathcona County Fire Department Station 1; St. Albert’s Hemingway Centre, which was originally built for the city’s RCMP detachment; and the Central Pentecostal Tabernacle, which was torn down in 2007.
