During Monday's meeting of Weyburn City Council, Leisure Services Director Andrew Crowe provided an update on the leak causing a delay for the reopening of the indoor pool at the Weyburn Leisure Centre.
Read more: Weyburn's Leisure Services Director explains reopening delay for indoor pool
Mayor Marcel Roy referred to previous discussions with the City administration about a long-term plan for replacing the Weyburn Leisure Centre, as the indoor facility opened in 1990.
Crowe said the process of working toward a new facility is in its infancy. However, since assessment funding for the WLC and the City's arenas was included in the 2024 City Budget, the WLC was assessed by a firm this year, which entailed an equipment review and structural assessment including the roof.
"Everything they could basically see through non-invasive testing," he explained. "With that, they develop a 10-year maintenance plan of things that need to be done."
The proponents were also asked to provide replacement costs for the facility if the City were to ahead with a new construction.
"There will be some reports provided to Council in the future, but we have received some D-class estimates, which can be out by quite a bit, so I don't even really want to go into the total cost, but a complete replacement of the pool would be fairly significant price tag to the City," Crowe noted. "I believe in Council, I mentioned somewhere ranging from, let's say 25 to 75 million."
He clarified that with a D-class estimate, the numbers could be off, but it is a starting point for the City's long-term budget process.
"Because of COVID and inflationary costs and everything else, we've just seen those construction costs really go up and up and up in the last few years, so the numbers aren't really that surprising when you look around at the other communities that are building new facilities. But it is something that we have to plan for, obviously, with the costs that we see, and we have to beef up our maintenance programs and try to take care of what we can before it gets to the point that we have to replace."
The WLC's indoor pool and systems would need to be addressed sooner than the outdoor pool, which was newly built in 2010.
"So it still has a lot of life to it and it's in great shape," he said. "There are different options. Just because we know the replacement cost doesn't mean that we have to go with a replacement. There may be other renovations or upgrades that could be done to extend the life of the building."
Crowe added that the outdoor pool was nonetheless included in the assessment.