FORT FRANCES — The pool portion of the Memorial Sportrs Centre will be closed for upgrades.
Starting Nov. 6, the pool with be closed to the public as construction company M Builds to renovate failing structural rehabilitation and repairs to the pool, piping, and HVAC ducts.
“This rehabilitation has been in the works for a few years now. Initially, we were looking at the construction of a new pool rehabilitating the existing building into new change rooms and expanding weight room and cardio room spaces, however, after a prolonged waiting period we found we were unsuccessful in a key grant to make that project a reality leaving that idea financially out of reach” said interim CAO Travis Rob.
After years of scrambling to find the funding to rehabilitate the Memorial Sports Centre, this year's budget allows the Town of Fort Frances to allocate $183,000.00 from reverses. $830,177 from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation was held by the municipality until they were able to get the rest of the funding together to start the project. A recent investment of $646,800 from the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program helped bridge the gap. The total available funding for the project is over 1.6 million.
“Because of this, we had to shift gears and look to address the structural issues now to be sure we could maintain a safe environment for patrons and staff in the immediate future. Unfortunately, delays in grant results left us using the existing pool longer than we wanted and contributed to the deterioration and criticality of the needed repairs,” Rob said.
M Build was awarded the tender on Oct 10 for being the lowest bidder with a bid of $1.4 million on the project.
Rob said the project is scheduled to take 20 to 22 weeks, with hopes that the pool will reopen by mid-March 2024.
“We are disappointed to be closing the pool at this time of the year but we needed to be sure that proper thorough design works were completed to be sure we could effectively complete the rehabilitation works,” explained Rob.
The municipality suggests that alternate programming will be offered during the shutdown, but details of what the programming entails have yet to be disclosed.
“The admin team at the Memorial Sports Centre has some plans for alternative programming and training we can provide during the shutdown. We have some plans but we’re really waiting for the tenders to close so we know the true duration and could finalize plans. There will be a recreator coming out in the coming weeks with program offerings through the winter months,” said Rob.
