The University of British Columbia, a nearly 50,000-student university in Vancouver, has announced plans for a new $38.5 million aquatics centre that will replace their existing 1978-built pool.
UBC is a swimming powerhouse in the Canadian collegiate ranks, and are coming off of both men’s and women’s titles at the Canada West Championships two weeks ago. That was the 25th conference championship for the women and the 14th for the men.
The women’s program are the defending CIS National Champions (their 18th title), with the men coming off of a runner-up finish to the University of Toronto. They put 7 swimmers on Canada’s World Championship team, and another 5 on their World University Games team, including Savannah King, who was on the Canadians’ 6th-place 800 free relay in Barcelona.
And as the team prepares for this year’s national championship meet, which runs from February 20th-22nd in Toronto, the school has finalized designs for it’s new aquatics facility to serve both the athletes and the school’s huge student body.
The new facility will include a 50 meter competition pool, a 25 meter rec pool, a leisure pool, and all of the other bells-and-whistles that go with large facilities like this (hot tub, changing rooms, meeting rooms).
Though there has been some resistance to demolishing the old pool, with it taking the place of the MacInnes Field, a recreational-use park. Overall, though, the community has been in favor of the new plan, which as comparison to the current pool will feature a lot of natural light and will be designed to host large national and international-level meets.
Other complaints include the huge outlay of costs at a time when UBC is in the process of reviewing its 29 varsity teams for which programs might be cut.
The new pool, planned to be competed in the summer of 2015, will have 2,153 square feet of spectator seating and a 19,429 square foot deck, though exact seating capacities weren’t revealed anywhere that we could find.
Canada is going through a bit of a building boom for new pools, including that being constructed on the UT-Scarsborough campus for the Pan Am Games.
The UBC pool is also home to a huge post-graduated training program, and one of that program’s former members, the now-retired Brent Hayden, voiced his excitement about the new facility on Twitter. On January 17th, he Tweeted that the current pool is “a great pool for high performance training, but not an adequate venue for competitions.”
Below, see plans and designs for the new pool.
Courtesy: Acton Ostry Architects Inc.
Courtesy: Acton Ostry Architects Inc.
Courtesy: Acton Ostry Architects Inc.
Courtesy: Acton Ostry Architects Inc.
Courtesy: Acton Ostry Architects Inc.
Looks great! Lot’s of room a straight forward layout – as compared to current pool – for meets.
FYI, Ivor, CIS meets don’t include diving.
If it’s a university pool then it would be expected to host a dual meet or a championship. One metre and three metre diving is a critical part on any college swimming team. Where are the diving facilities?
There is no diving in Canadian university (CIS) swimming.
Looks beautiful and like the facility upgrades happening in a number of Canadian cities.
looks like she is fixing her shoe/flip flop, not diving from the side. Even in the States that is a pretty common sight
Can we get a disqualification on the girl in the track start position from the second picture? That’s clearly a pre-2010 suit and I’m fairly certain that even in Canada, diving in from the side of the pool is no no.
“Even” in Canada?