The new liner purchased for Port Hardy’s temporarily closed indoor swimming pool has finally arrived.
The District of Port Hardy made the announcement on its official Facebook page, stating the liner arrived Thursday, March 16, after it took “a great vacation touring the ocean for a number of weeks waiting to get off of the barge, but it arrived and was shipped this way.”
The district added that lots of planning and behind the scenes work have been happening, and as such, residents will “start to see the pool take shape.”
Director of Recreation Tanya Kaul noted district staff “are so thrilled” with the liner’s arrival, “and the whole community is behind us on this and we’re just excited to get this project underway and have the pool up and running by the end of this year.”
Kaul pointed out that having the pool finally open for business again “means we can add on to what we’ve already been doing - we’ve been so successful with our community recreation programming and arena programming, and the one piece of recreation that’s been missing has been the pool programming, so it’s really going to compliment what we’ve already been so successful at.”
Port Hardy Mayor Pat Corbett-Labatt said the next step is to “get it installed, and we still have a lot of electrical and mechanical work to be done, but we’re really excited about the pool liner being here.”
Corbett-Labatt added her fingers are crossed that the pool will be reopening by the summer.
“We’re very hopeful,” she said.
Originally, the district had planned to entirely replace the 40+ year old pool with a state of the art multiplex. However, after being turned down for funding by the federal and provincial governments, council decided to move forward with a “Pool Revitalization Project” that would simply upgrade the existing pool.
The pool has been closed for much needed repairs since June of 2021.
@NIGazette
editor@northislandgazette.com
Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter