With the now four-year-long closure of the Jeno Tihanyi Olympic Gold Pool having “severely impacted” the club, the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club said it wants to participate in discussions between LU and the City of Greater Sudbury aimed at reopening the university-owned facility.
“As Laurentian University moves forward with the pool's remediation, we would like the opportunity to participate on the joint planning committee recently mentioned in a Laurentian University press release,” said an April 29 letter to Laurentian’s new president, Lynn Wells, and Mayor Paul Lefebvre from the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club, signed by president Marie-Lea Bray.
(You can view the letter in full at the bottom of this article).
“Given our club’s history and investment in the pool, we believe our insights would be valuable as the university and city map out the future of the pool,” the letter continues. “Your leadership is crucial in revitalizing our aquatic infrastructure for the benefit of all Sudburians and we would like the opportunity to contribute.”
The pool’s prolonged closure “has severely impacted our club and others in the region,” and “communication has been consistently frustrating,” the letter continues.
It points out the club’s significant investments in the pool’s equipment, but “nonetheless, we have not been engaged in any dialogue around a clear plan for the pool's future.”
In February, Laurentian’s board of governors passed a motion to initiate discussions with the City of Greater Sudbury for the creation of a joint planning committee on facility renewal. Mayor Lefebvre and LU president Lynn Wells met on the issue last month.
A review of City of Greater Sudbury-owned aquatic facilities is also ongoing, and is expected to be completed this September.
The Jeno Tihanyi Pool, which was built in 1972, was shut down in the spring of 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and never reopened. In early 2022, with Laurentian University still undergoing insolvency restructuring, the pool started to leak.
With LU having exited insolvency in late 2022 and able to spend money on repairing more than the absolute essentials, Laurentian has been investigating what it would cost to repair and reopen the facility.
The university received a repair options report on the pool in December 2023 from consultants JL Richards, but has declined to make the report public to date, prompting a freedom of information request from Sudbury.com.
Last week, Sudbury.com reported that Laurentian University has not allocated any funds to fixing the pool as part of its 2024-2025 deferred maintenance budget.
There was, however, $300,000 allocated toward assessing the state of the pool as part of Laurentian’s 2023-2024 deferred maintenance budget. University financial materials show that $108,686 of that amount has been spent.
There’s no specific date as to when the university hopes to reopen the pool as it engages in discussions with the city, Sylvie Lafontaine, Laurentian’s vice-president finance and administration, said during the April 26 board of governors meeting.
She added that “it’s a question of cost.”
Following that meeting, Sudbury.com reached out to Mayor Paul Lefebvre’s office, requesting an interview with him on Laurentian’s pool. His office declined our interview request, instead providing a written statement attributed to the mayor.
“I met with the new president, Dr. Lynn Wells, and we discussed several issues of importance for Laurentian University,” said Lefebvre, in the statement.
“The city’s comprehensive aquatics review to be presented in September will include refined metrics for aquatic service delivery and help guide future provision of these services. We need to review this report before making any decisions on our infrastructure.”
The letter from the Laurentian swim club said during the Jeno Tihanyi pool’s prolonged closure, its club members, along with other organizations, have been using City of Greater Sudbury pools.
However, the city pools are frequently closed for repairs and heavily used by other clubs. The Jeno Tihanyi pool is also the only 50-metre pool in the region, the letter said, and was once the most important area pool for regional competitions.
“Since the pool’s closure, Sudbury has been unable to host any competition of significant size because of the state and size of city pools,” the letter said. Also highlighted is the lack of accessibility at not only the Jeno Tihanyi pool, but city pools.
Albrecht Schulte-Hostedde, vice-president of the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club, said in an interview with Sudbury.com that the club is “super frustrated that the university is punting things now to the city, which will take more time to get that pool opened.”
He also expressed frustration and disappointment about the absence of new funding in Laurentian’s maintenance budget to fix the pool and the fact that meetings with the mayor’s office on the issue began only recently.
Schulte-Hostedde said there’s no doubt that the Laurentian pool does need to be part of the city’s aquatics review, but the club’s concern is getting the facility open as quickly as possible, because its absence is putting local swimmers at a disadvantage.
He points out that the longer the Laurentian pool is closed, the weaker the club is in terms of its financial capacity to contribute to the pool’s operation, as it’s losing swimmers.
“It has taken far too long,” he said. “I mean, we're talking about over four years, right? We have a cohort of swimmers that have never swam in that pool. A class that started high school in 2020 has never been in that pool. Anyway, it's very frustrating. It's super disappointing.”
Full letter from Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club:
Laurentian University President Wells and City of Greater Sudbury Mayor Lefebvre,
We write to you as the Board of the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club, a swim club that has trained and competed at the Jeno Tihanyi Olympic Gold Pool at Laurentian University for the last 50 years. The pool is a vital piece of sports and community infrastructure – the only 50 meter Olympic-sized pool north of the Greater Toronto area, and is crucial for our swimmers, Greater Sudbury and Northeastern Ontario (NEOR region).
The prolonged closure of the pool, initially due to the COVID-19 pandemic and later because of maintenance issues, has severely impacted our club and other users in the region (click here for an opinion article we wrote in Oct. 2021 with other community partners about the situation). Despite the efforts of NEOR swim clubs (Sudbury - 3 clubs, North Bay, Sault Ste Marie, Timmins, Kapuskasing, Cochrane, Timiskaming, Kirkland Lake, Sturgeon Falls, Elliot Lake and Hearst), Swim Ontario, Swim Canada and others to engage with Laurentian University to facilitate the pool's reopening, communication has been consistently frustrating.
Our club has invested significantly in the pool's equipment, including purchasing lane ropes, starting blocks, touch pads, pace clocks, scoreboards, and funding operations. In addition, we supported the now-closed Laurentian varsity swim team with not only our equipment, but our swim officials and meet management expertise.
Nonetheless, we have not been engaged in any dialogue around a clear plan for the pool's future. For the past four years, our swim club and the community at large have had to adjust to the absence of the pool.
The City of Greater Sudbury has stepped in to create times and spaces for local organizations displaced by the pool closure, including our club. Nonetheless, the aging city pools have been frequently closed for repairs, as well as heavily used by other swim clubs, synchronized swimming, lessons, and community groups. Our club and others who have found themselves displaced have also incurred significant cost increases that have impacted youth programming. This underlines the urgency for the pool's re-opening.
We can all agree that the pool is important for the university and the City of Greater Sudbury. The pool used to be the most important pool for regional competitions. Our club hosted 4-6 Swim Ontario sanctioned club level swim meets, and numerous high school level competitions annually, bringing thousands of school aged swimmers and their families to campus and
Sudbury from across the province and beyond. This provided recruitment opportunities for Laurentian and economic benefits to the city. Since the pool’s closure Sudbury has been unable to host any competition of significant size because of the state and size of city pools.
This influx of competitors and visitors to Sudbury is far greater when you consider other tenured users of the pool, such as Sudbury Synchro.
An important point we would like to raise is the lack of accessibility to not only the LU pool but the city pools as well. Our physically disabled athletes have struggled to navigate the accessible stairs, ramps, and change rooms.
Transgender athletes do not have adequate change facilities and are forced to change in closets and first aid rooms. The lack of family change rooms also poses numerous problems for young families attempting to access opportunities.
As Laurentian University moves forward with the pool's remediation, we would like the opportunity to participate on the joint planning committee recently mentioned in a Laurentian University press release.
Given our club’s history and investment in the pool, we believe our insights would be valuable as the university and city map out the future of the pool. Your leadership is crucial in revitalizing our aquatic infrastructure for the benefit of all Sudburians and we would like the opportunity to contribute.
We look forward to hearing from you,
Marie-Lea Bray
President
Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club
Heidi Ulrichsen is Sudbury.com’s assistant editor. She also covers education and the arts scene.
