A former Olympic swimmer with long ties to McKinnon Pool has launched a petition and is in discussions with the University of Victoria about potentially saving the facility.
UVic announced last week it would be closing the 50-year-old pool in September, saying it has reached the end of its life and is too costly to maintain.
That didn’t sit right with Wayne Kelly, who competed in the 1984 Olympics and was a national university swimmer for the Vikes in the 1980s.
He said the loss of the pool would mean hundreds of swimmers, from varsity athletes to recreational participants, would have to go elsewhere to swim, crowding the six pools left in the region — at the same time as Victoria’s Crystal Pool could be shut down for years while a replacement is built.
Kelly, a principal in Sooke School District and head of sports academies, said the closure will also leave UVic as the only major university in the country without an aquatic facility.
On Thursday, a group led by Kelly launched an online petition to keep the pool open. He also launched a Facebook account this week that has collected 250 members and plenty of comments from people hoping the pool will remain open.
Kelly noted that UVic previously shuttered the Racquet Club pool at the Ian Stewart Complex in 2015, which means it will have closed two pools in the last decade if the McKinnon Pool closure goes ahead.
“UVic says the pool isn’t used that much, but that is not the case,” said Kelly, who still swims at the pool twice a week and sees dozens of groups of all ages using the facility.
Those signing the petition have called UVic’s decision an “embarrassment” and “short-sighted.”
The pool, which is expected to close by Sept. 15, is used by varsity teams, the Pacific Coast Swimming club, students, alumni clubs and others, such as triathletes and synchronized swimmers — even kayaking clubs that teach safety.
The Vikes varsity swim program and Pacific Coast Swimming, which has about 300 members, are scrambling to make plans to move to municipal pools in the region.
UVic said it will assist student aquatic clubs to relocate their activities, “where possible.”
It said recreational swimmers can use nearby pool facilities at Gordon Head and Oak Bay recreation centres.
Michelle Peterson, director of operations for varsity athletics, said last week the pool deck and mechanical operations are showing their age and upgrades would cost more than $1.5 million, a price tag the university isn’t willing to support.
In the announcement last week, Nicole Greengoe, executive director of wellness, recreation and athletics at UVic, said while the pool is primarily used by varsity, Pacific Coast Swimming and some student and alumni clubs, it has low recreational use by students, faculty and staff.
She said the university has to balance the significant cost of upgrading and maintaining the facility alongside investments in infrastructure and programming that benefit the entire campus community.
The McKinnon athletics facility, which includes a gym, the pool, weight and fitness rooms, and other areas, was essentially replaced with the $77-million Centre for Athletics, Recreation and Special Abilities complex, commonly known as CARSA, which opened in the spring of 2015.
That also triggered the decommissioning of parts of the Ian Stewart Complex, or the former Racquet Club, which included the other pool.
At the time, UVic said the outdoor pool cost $321,000 to operate for five months, and in 2014 it generated just $30,000 in revenue. UVic also said it would cost an extra $445,000 to maintain the pool to keep it running for another five years.
The CARSA project did have a Phase 2, which included plans for an indoor pool. There is space alongside the new building, but it’s just a parking lot now because “the plan for a pool just fell off the map,” said Kelly.
He said when Commonwealth Pool in Saanich opened in 1994, the region had a population of 290,000 and there were eight swimming pools. “We’re up to about 410,000 people now and two pools have closed, both by UVic.”
One of signers of the petition, Adam Krawitz, said: “A university of more than 20,000 students with a varsity swim team that is incapable of maintaining a functioning swimming pool for health, fitness and sport will not be viewed by anyone as a world-class institution. It is a sign of a school in decline.”
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