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Raymond takes plunge with new family pool |
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Written by Sherri Gallant LETHBRIDGE HERALD
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Wednesday, July 01 2009, 9:46 PM |
It came right down to the wire, with crews scrambling to put on the finishing touches and staff awaiting the green light from inspectors, but the Raymond Aquatic Centre opened as hoped on Canada Day, adding a long-anticipated splash to the town’s annual Stampede and Canada Day celebrations.
Raymond is rolling out the welcome mat, inviting southern Albertans to come out and try the new pool complex and party facility. Public swimming will run from 1-9 p.m. every day during the week, 1-8 p.m. on weekends. Requests for pool rentals were piling up long before it opened, said Mayor George Bohne.
“We’re quite excited about all the things that it can offer,” Bohne said.
“The pool will be open to the general public more than the other one was, because we can accommodate more than one thing at a time. We’ll be able to accommodate lane swimming just about any time the pool is open, whereas before we’d have to close it to the public to let those that were wanting to do lane swimming to come in.
“We have a multipurpose room in our facility for people to come and have parties. People can come and have birthday parties and swim at the same time. The change room has three family change rooms along with the other regular change rooms.
“We think we have a really good family oriented program here that will appeal to a wide range of people across southern Alberta, and we’re putting the emphasis on it being a family facility. We’ve planted a little picnic area around it so people can come out and spend the day and then enjoy some of the amenities of the great community of Raymond.”
With a capacity of 500, it’s double what the town’s old pool could handle — the last steel-basin swimming pool in Alberta.
“We knew it was on its last gasp,” Bohne said. “We had welding patches on top of welding patches.”
Along with a bigger facility comes the need for additional staff, but the community has been able to provide all the manpower required, Bohne said.
“We’ve had to expand our lifeguard numbers considerably, which is a good thing for the young people of our community. We’ve been very fortunate that we’ve been able to hire everyone we need and we’ll have a staff close to 18 to 20 people.”
The complex includes a six-lane, 25-metre competition pool that deepens to 12 feet with a one-metre diving board, then opens to a kidney-shaped recreation area, including two waterslides, a water spray feature, teaching areas and a toddler pool. The old pool was demolished at the end of its season last year. Bohne said town officials did contemplate building an indoor facility, but the population didn’t justify the additional cost and staffing was an anticipated problem.
“Now we have expanded opportunity to expand swim lessons, which have always been at capacity,” Bohne said.
Culture and Community Spirit Minister Lindsay Blackett delivered a cheque for $1 million last December so Raymond could finish the project, which took about a year to build and cost nearly $3 million. The timing is not lost on Bohne, who watched with interest as Blackett met with community groups in southern Alberta days ago, delivering a different message — one of belt-tightening.
“We really got our funding in just under the wire,” he said.
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