City urged to build pool for sports

Flippaball final St Goldan Sands v Tahatai Coast at Papamoa Swimming Pool. Pictured, Lucy Calcott of Tahatai Coast School.

Tauranga has been urged to plan to build a specialist aquatic sports pool to help lift the area above its near-bottom ranking in a national study of public swimming pools.

Paul Kayes, a leading surf lifesaving and water polo administrator, said a 2-metre deep 25m pool would cater for sports such as water polo and synchronised swimming that were competing for limited pool space in Tauranga.

Mr Kayes backed his request by highlighting an in-depth study commissioned by Sport New Zealand that showed the Bay of Plenty was under-supplied by four pools, with only Northland's shortage of five lifting the Bay off bottom spot.

He said the figures for the Bay of Plenty were a reflection of the situation in Tauranga and the rest of the Western Bay. The report, which benchmarked each region against a set of requirements, showed that seven of New Zealand's 13 regions were over-supplied with standard-sized pools - an Olympic pool was counted as two standard pools.

Mr Kayes pitched the idea to the council this week at the same time as he stated his opposition to the council's plan to cut costs by an earlier closing of Baywave.

He said the sports that required a 2-metre deep pool could not afford to build it but could meet the day-to-day operational costs.

Mr Kayes said the new pool could be a modest design, with a trust of sports users to take responsibility for its operation. The council's financial situation meant it would be part of the council's long-term planning but, in the meantime, he asked the council to form an aquatic users' network to assist with getting more efficient use of its pools. There are some exciting and incredibly efficient and profitable new aquatic centres being developed by private businesses around the country. These designs could be considered by the council as replacement for the city's ageing aquatics network."

One of the private developments was Tauranga's Liz van Welie Swim School, which will start building two learn-to-swim pools at Pyes Pa in about six months. The stainless steel pools were being imported from the US as components to be welded together on-site, next to the Althorp Retirement Village. Swim school director Greg Cummings, who worked closely with the council when he was with Sport BOP, told the Bay of Plenty Times Weekend that a mind shift was needed among all aquatic facility users as to how they used the available pool space.

"Growing demand is a great problem to have - it means more people are being more active. The solution has to be better use of pools throughout the entire week."

The council will consider Mr Kayes' request next month.