Remember when there was a fountain outside the Four Seasons Aquatic Centre?
Hasn’t been there for quite a while, has it? I’ll bet a lot of people in the city either didn’t know or had forgotten there was a fountain there. It was a Centennial project, built in 1967.
The pool was built in 1970, not that long after. The fountain has been gone for quite a few years. (And no wonder. A fountain in downtown Prince George? Not perhaps the greatest way to mark the Centennial.)
So it’s no wonder the pool is one of the buildings city council is being told needs to be replaced.
Unfortunately, the same report to council also said the Four Seasons and the Aquatic Centre are both needed to meet the needs of residents.
So how do you replace a pool that you need to keep in operation? The simplest answer, and the one council will probably end up choosing, is you build a new pool somewhere else, get it up and running, and then tear down the Four Seasons.
I’m not going to get into the question of where the new pool should be, although Coun. Jillian Merrick and I agreed Monday morning on After Nine, the show I host three days a week on CFIS-FM, that the current site of Fire Hall No. 1 (also due to be replaced) was probably too small.
Nor am I really going to get into the question of what should go on the site of the current Four Seasons. All I will say is it should not be a commercial building. That area is home to a variety of cultural buildings, let’s not spoil it.
And get used to this sort of discussion. A lot of the city’s main buildings are getting old. Some can be kept with minor upkeep; others will need to be replaced.
All will cost money.
And all that money comes, eventually, from the same person – the taxpayer.
One thought on “What to do with the Four Seasons Pool?”
A couple of things I would like to add that many people seem to forget.
The area around City Hall, extending to the west across Dominion Street, is in a 200 year flood zone. That is why City Hall was build higher. Even if the Firehall site was larger and it would be an appropriate area for the pool from a planning point of view – which I don’t think it would be – a pool there would have to be built at least as high up as the present pool. The reason? If it were put into the ground at, or close to the level of the Firehall, the hydraulic pressure of a high water table would force the pool to lift if it were emptied in order to perform wall finish or other maintenance requiring emptying the pool.
With respect to replacing the existing pool with a commercial building, I strongly believe on of the reasons that the City Plaza is not as successful as it could be is because there is no commercial development in that precinct to provide activity when there is none.
The planners who developed the original functions program for the competition of the City’s cultural centre required the inclusion of sufficient on site parking as well as commercial space to activate the centre during times when there was low utilization of the Civic Centre, Library and Gallery. That did not occur.
The pool does not open onto the Plaza site as does the Civic Centre, Library and Two Rivers Gallery. Neither does the Coast Inn. It is yet to be seen what the new Hotel will provide as far as restaurants, newspaper/magazine outlets, coffee shop, etc.
The Two Rivers Gallery shop has no direct access to the Plaza without going into the actual Gallery. I suspect it would get better traffic if it did have a direct access to passers by.
The original plan would have placed all buildings at a higher level which would have avoided the floodplane issue as well as the issue of the Library now being a level up from the rest of the plaza other than the pool and the Coast Inn. It would have been at a level similar to Brunswick St.
The winning competitor got it right! That is why they won the competition which had a high participation from across the country.
The City allowed Two Rivers Gallery to be build at a lower level. The Civic Centre was also built at a lower level (the ground floor is actually a few inches below the 100 floodplane). In addition to other consequences, both building took away from on-site parking. On site parking was a requirement of the original design program.
This part of the City is a high value property from the quality point of view. It represents what this city is to its citizens and to our visitors. It is high time we had a planning review to see whether we have achieved what we wanted to achieve and whether it is able to achieve what we now want to achieve.
If ever there was a need for the input of citizens into what we want this has got to be trump all Talktobers for the next 5 years!!