Taking a deep dive into Acadia University's decision to close its pool

Three times a week, 91-year-old Shirley Marston drives seven minutes to go for a morning swim at the Acadia Athletics Complex in Wolfville, N.S.

She usually does about 24 lengths and goes to a local coffee shop afterwards with some friends, including some who exercise at the recreation facility. Swimming is good for her mind and body, she says.

But by next Sunday, Marston's routine will change when Acadia University closes its 58-year-old pool.

"I have a few things in my mind, but I don't know whether they'll work or not," she said. "But right now, I'll keep trying to find a place to swim."

The nearest indoor pools to Wolfville are in Windsor, Waterville and Greenwood.

In February, the Annapolis Valley university announced it was closing the pool, citing persistent annual deficits and a lengthy list of needed repairs. As well, the university said prolonging the pool's life would require a two-year shutdown.

The announced closure came as a shock to many. But reports prepared for the Town of Wolfville and the Municipality of the County of Kings have for years cautioned that the pool's days were numbered.

A 2022 regional recreational centre feasibility study prepared for the county noted the pool is "outdated and functionally is unable to meet the needs and expectations of patrons." The report said it was reasonable to assume the pool might close in three to five years.

A 2015 report prepared for the town noted the pool required resources to maintain that were beyond the scope of the university and the town.

Wolfville Mayor Jodi MacKay said it's been convenient for the town to have a non-government entity like the university operate a pool used extensively by community members.

"It's always harder to move faster when you have an option that's already there for you," she said. "And now that there isn't an option, it kind of does light that fire under us."

MacKay, who served two terms as a town councillor before being elected mayor last fall, said discussions about the need for a new pool go back as long as she was on council, but only really heated up in the past four years, along with the discussion about a regional recreation complex.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the housing crisis just complicated matters.

"We're a small municipality, so ... we only have a limited number of staff and a limited budget," said MacKay. "So we do the best we can with what we have."

Kings County Mayor Dave Corkum said the municipality will soon be announcing the purchase of land that will one day house a regional recreational complex that would include a pool. He said they are about halfway through the process, but the finished complex won't likely be open until late 2028.

"It's a situation that's unfortunate," he said. "If maybe this had been known three, four years prior to [now], maybe the current new facility that we're trying to build, [we] may have been able to fast-track it a little bit more and hopefully get it off the ground."

Escalating repair costs

When the university announced the closure on Feb. 10, it said repairs would cost more than $3 million. Problems included the pool leaking a substantial amount of water and mechanical systems like filtration and HVAC being at the end of their life.

But when the community pushed back, the university asked an engineering firm to take a second look. On Feb. 15, repair costs were pegged at between $5 million and $7 million.

"Additional concerns include unknown structural deterioration, leakage damage, and groundwater pressure, all of which add complexity and cost," the university wrote on its website.

'Rushed and hasty'

Meg Shephard, a member of the Save Acadia Pool group, has a daughter who just wrapped up her third year on the university's swim team. Shephard is critical of the decision to close the pool.

"When the news first came out, it seemed very rushed and hasty," said Shephard.

She'd like to see the pool in operation until a new facility can be constructed.

The university has cited an annual $400,000 operating deficit, but Shephard said that's misleading because about half of that comes from costs for running the varsity swim team, such as coaching, events, team travel and scholarships.

The university declined an interview request, noting it has been providing information to the public, including posting completed freedom of information packages, on its website.

"At this time, we cannot respond to inquiries or provide interviews related to the closure of the swimming pool due to threatened legal action by some members of the swim team and their parents," it said in a statement to CBC.

Documents shed light on university's reasoning

The documents show that a month before announcing the closure, university officials pondered other options, including agreeing to keep the pool open until spring 2026 as it carried out a feasibility study.

"Just thinking, for the cost of keeping it open likely for one more year, we could take a more defendable community-informed approach to this decision and leave less people in the cold," wrote Scott Duguay, vice-president of student experience, in a Jan. 11 email to university president Jeff Hennessy and another official.

The move would also give swim team members more time to consider their options.

Hennessy replied a day later that he was OK with the pool staying open another year to allow for communications and design plans to be developed.

"The problem with community consultation on this is we're not likely to listen to them if they have a different view than we do," he wrote.

"We could find $5 million under the mattress and we're still going to close the pool because we wouldn't spend that money fixing it and we have better options for the space."

A month later, as the university had an engineering firm take a second look at options for the pool, Acadia officials discussed how to phrase the update on the website.

"For a 7 year life extension the pool needs a comprehensive renewal," Marcel Falkenham, the university's executive director of facilities, wrote on Feb. 14.

'Hope dies today!': University president's email

Hennessy thought that point should be left out.

"The message has to be this is not possible because the building could collapse," he wrote. "Not in those words, but that has to be what people hear and it's the truth. If we say comprehensive renewal could give us 7 more years, that's still hope. Hope dies today!"

The final three words are particularly painful for Shephard.

"To see a university president say, 'Hope dies today!' when you see that his team is actually trying to do the right thing and he just shuts it down, it's heartbreaking," she said.

A business plan was prepared for the university's athletics complex in 2019. On the subject of the pool, it recommended that the university not make a unilateral decision to close it because of its importance to the broader community.

Corkum, elected last October, doesn't know what conversations took place between the municipality and Acadia before then. Corkum said that when the pool closure was announced, he suggested working with the university to find options.

"And the president of Acadia at that time, Jeff Hennessy, made it clear to me that I should not be providing any false hope to people, that the pool was going to be closed and that they felt they had no choice," said Corkum.

"And at the end of the day, it is their pool and I have to respect that decision."