Plans for a new indoor pool facility are underway in Weyburn. However, residents are worried the design for the proposed $30 million project is moving ahead without insight from the community. The City of Weyburn is planning to build a new single-basin indoor aquatics facility within its $30 million budget. The project comes after the community’s current Weyburn Leisure Centre was unable to open in fall 2024, and has been closed since, due to the pool deteriorating 10 to 15 years prior to its expected lifecycle, according to the city’s website. David Edgerton, a retired architect, is concerned about the project’s layout. He proposes the city should research how two pool tanks can be built instead of one, while staying within its budget. “With the two-tank facility, you can have a sport activity going on, a competition, and you still have the other tank for your community recreation which is necessary because you have to cater to the community needs as well,” he said, stating two pools would better fit the community’s needs. “ … Similarly, if there’s not a competition going on, then you do have opportunities for open swimming at any time of the day. Previously with a single tank facility, there was a very limited amount of programming that you could have there. There was no way you could overlap any activities and so people would miss out.” Edgerton, who has been volunteering in aquatics for 16 years, is also concerned about the location where the new spot will be built. He is one of various residents who say the indoor pool is needed in the community with the hope of not replicating the city’s older model. “I’m in favour of something like the [Credit Union] Spark Centre which the city has done so well, where we can have more than one activity happening at the same time,” said Leah Fornwald, who used the indoor pool for lane swimming. Fornwald is also a retired teacher. She said providing youth with the opportunity to learn how to swim is essential for public safety. However, with the indoor pool being closed for the last two years, she said students have missed out. “How long is this going to take? Because every year that we don’t have an indoor pool, all the Grade 3s and 5s don’t get swimming lessons,” she said. “It’s going to end up unsafe because how many kids have backdoor pools now? We’ve got kids that haven’t learned to swim and they’re swimming at home.” Another resident, who used to be a lifeguard when first moving to the city, said having an indoor pool is significant for Weyburn so people do not have to travel outside of the community to gain access. “I get that a bigger pool is a want, but a pool in this size of a city is a need,” said Lisa Guest, whose two sons have used the facility for years. “It’s something that’s required. Kids need to know how to swim. The schools provide swimming lessons as well so that’s an important thing.” Pool design not finalized: City In June, Weyburn City Council hired P3 Architecture Partnership (P3A) to design the new aquatic centre based on the city’s budget restrictions in collaboration with the pool’s steering committee. With the committee being made up members from council, city administration and Colliers Project Leaders, the mayor addressed how members from the community will be involved in the project’s next steps. “P3A - the company that we’ve hired to help lead this process … we’ve asked them to engage. Last year they did engage with the public through a survey,” said Mayor Jeff Richards. “They also did some engagement with user groups, places like Weyburn Water Polo, [Water Polo Saskatchewan], they did ten user groups as well. These are one-on-one surveys without municipal people in the room to try to gather feedback. As the city is currently on its design and tendering phase – which is projected to happen from April 1, 2026 to Aug. 1, 2027 – Richards added the city plans to continue engaging with user groups as the pool gets closer to a finalized design. When asked if including two-pool rinks for the project is still a possibility, Richards said it would have to meet the city’s allocated costs. “When we talk to the consultants that we’ve hired, folks that have built swimming pools, they have said to us $30 million is highly unlikely to get two basins built. Very unlikely,” Richards said Tuesday afternoon. “The other part of that is it costs a lot of money to run a basin. If you run two basins, that’s almost double the amount of money right? We’re also aware as a council we have got to watch that operational cost going forward that doesn’t escalate from $900,000 a year to $1.4 million a year because it can’t.” He added if citizens advocated for a larger pool facility down the road council would listen to the community. “Ultimately this is the peoples’ facility,” he said. “If the people of Weyburn overwhelmingly say to us, ‘We want two basins and we want to use the old pool,’ but that budget comes in at $65 million. We have got a decision then that we have to make.” Where will the new pool be built? The pool is confirmed to be built at Jubilee Park. However, the exact location in that area has not been decided by the city. Director of Leisure Services Richard Henning said attaching the new pool to the Sparks Leisure Centre is one of the “pre-designed options” for the facility, but nothing is finalized as costs will be a factor to consider. “The reason this current leisure facility shut down was a failure in the pool basin itself. We found a leak coming from the pool basin,” Henning said. “Upon further investigation and structural engineers review it was found that the pool basin structure is not structurally sound. It’s going to require a complete rebuild.” Henning added the city did not assess the building of the indoor pool to see if it can remain intact. “We have had some kind of non-destructive assessments done inside the facility just to gauge the age and things like that, but it wasn’t a full, thorough assessment to say if the structure itself is good for repurposed measure,” he explained. “That’s going to be part of this overall project is to assess that structure to see if we can repurpose it.” Council was provided with four different options when approving their budget for the pool project. One option was to renovate its existing facility with one pool basin for an estimated cost of $24.6 million, another proposal was to renovate and expand its current facility for $32.3 million, and the other option was to build a new facility with two basins for $45.8 million. The option council approved was to construct a new competitive pool for $30 million. “They all came with different project capital costs up front and they all came with different operational costs down the road that will incur year after year,” Henning added. As of now, city administration said the project is still on course for its grand opening in 2030.
