City seizes control of long-delayed pool replacement project
Following the City of Fort St. John’s decision to pull out of the North Peace Leisure Facility Replacement Steering Committee last month, the Peace River Regional District this week dissolved the Steering Committee.
The city says that the decision “reflects a strategic shift that will allow the City to take a more direct leadership role in advancing the replacement of the North Peace Leisure Pool.”
These moves come after nearly a decade of work on the North Peace Leisure Pool (NPLP) replacement project, a decade punctuated by delays and sporadic public consultation.
Since the current pool was opened in 1996 to replace the original pool, the NPLP has been plagued by on-going maintenance issues, which led to the closure and removal of the hot tub, tots pool and repeated shutdowns of the waterslide. At the same time, the population of Fort St. John and the surrounding area has grown, increasing pressure on the facility to the point where it is no longer able to properly meet the region’s needs.
After getting off to a great start in 2018, with feasibility studies and public consultation, the process ground to a halt in the spring of 2019, a year into the “pause” Covid hit and that delayed any further action on the project until April 2022, when the committee came back with plans for more engagement sessions and a feasibility study in 2023.
Based on what they heard from the public in the engagement sessions, options for the new facility were developed and presented to the public through more engagement sessions in April 2024, six years after planning and consultation for the project began.
One of the hurdles the committee has faced is the increased cost of the project since the first studies were done in 2018. At that time, when asked if they wanted to participate, Taylor, Fort St. John, and PRRD Areas B and C were told the project would cost $60 million. Options outlined in 2024, based on what additional amenities the public wanted to see in the new facility, ranged from $136 million to $284 million.
The other sticking point was that in every proposed budget for the new facility, the cost of the land to build the pool on was excluded. Tay-payers wanted to know what the land would cost, so it could be factored into their decision about whether this new facility was something they could afford.
This is a mistake. It seems obvious to me that their directors from area BNC have stalled and delayed things. People need to remember that major facilities like this to serve the whole region need to be funded region. The existing pool seems 73% of its funding From the rural oil and gas and a very small portion from some residence that are close by. City counts continue with the line standing policy that major projects are funded regionally .