City finishes public engagement for replacement pool

FORT ST. JOHN. B.C. — The city has paused all of its engagement sessions and will be moving into the design phase of the replacement pool. 

The City of Fort St. John hosted two engagement opportunities for business owners and managers to discuss the new replacement pool on April 14th and 15th. 

“[There were] great questions and conversation about the project and about the impacts to local businesses and residents as well,” said Ryan Harvey, communications manager for the City of Fort St. John. 

This comes after the city released concept designs for the pool, which carries a $185 million price tag. 

The city also received positive feedback from the public during the 51st annual 2026 Fort St. John Trade Show, held from April 10th to 12th. 

Trevor Bolin, councillor for the City of Fort St. John and a member of the city’s new aquatic facility working group, said: “It’s funny because…as long as I’ve been on council, I can’t recall actual business sessions where these were geared towards business owners.” 

“So both of these were geared towards business owners, managers, commercial properties, and I’m really happy with the way they turned out.” 

Bolin said the city will spend the next few months working on final costs and designs. 

“You’re going to see daytime, evening, weekend and digital versions of all the information, so that everybody gets a really good chance to be able to see everything and this is going to be provided in a detailed format, and we’re excited for that,” he added. 

While there has been excitement around the project, Harvey noted, there have also been questions. 

“[The questions are based on] making sure that we’re responsible and that we’ve kind of learned some lessons from the existing facility, North Peace Leisure Pool, making sure the water slides are inside, instead of outdoors,” he added. “But also making sure we’re being responsible in terms of the finances and ensuring we’re looking out for the best interests of our taxpayers.” 

Bolin said information will be released to address questions raised during the session. In addition, a couple of suggestions were made. 

“It’s mostly questions for explanation, because it’s very tough to look at a digital rendering and figure out what sort of amenities are going to be in there,” he explained. 

After 30 different meetings with the public, user groups and businesses, “we’ve [been] able to kind of see that we’re on the right track,” Bolin added. “The main concern was [the] cost, and we’ve been able to stabilize [it].” 

The next steps will be final designs of the amenities and real-life drawings so that people can understand and review the costs of both operations and capital. 

“Now we’re working on grants, sponsorships and partnerships. When we come back this summer, that’s going to be all inclusive of a lot of that information, if not all of it,” he added. 

Request for proposals, Harvey said, went out on March 30th and will close on April 20th. 

Harvey noted: “The next step is awarding this to the integrated project delivery team, the contractor and the architect, and then from there really working towards refining the design and the costing of the facility.” 

When asked when new information would be available to the public, Bolin said: “We’re going to have to wait for the RFP [request for proposals], the design team and the construction team to close.

“They’ll be able to work on coming up with those details and prices. The committee will be able to use all the feedback that we’ve heard to ensure that it’s in line with what the residents and businesses and everybody in the area wants and needs, and then we’ll roll out with that.”