Grande Prairie Outdoor Pool. Photo Credit: City of Grande Prairie

By Shane Clausing

City Hall

City calling first year of outdoor pool a success

Oct 5, 2020 | 1:10 PM

The City of Grande Prairie says the Grande Prairie Outdoor Pool located in Muskoseepi Park is celebrating a successful first full season.

Initially, the pool was scheduled to open for in the summer of 2019, however, because of construction delays, it did not open until August 24. The pool was then only able to stay open for a couple of weeks due to weather.

Before 2019, the pool had been undergoing renovations for six years because of a large crack in the structure.

While this year’s season was still delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the public was still able to take advantage of most of the summer weather.

The pool first opened this year on July 4 and hosted an estimated 10,275 visitors.

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Those who took advantage of the pool were placed in cohorts of 25 people per group and split up into different time slots throughout the day. Six 45 minute time slots were available on weekdays, and eight 60 minute long bookings were available on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.

Bobbi Way, the Guest Services Supervisor at Eastlink Centre, says she was happy to see so many people take advantage. of the outdoor pool being open.

“I don’t think we were surprised, I think we were excited by it. I don’t know that there was a lot to do anywhere in the province. So, we were excited to have the doors open and the ability to greet some guests there this summer.”

While the pool is once again heading into the unknown for the summer of 2021 because of COVID-19, Way says that the hope is to have it open for all of the warm weather.

“We are definitely hoping to open for a full season next summer. Obviously, we don’t know what it will look like, whether we’ll maintain these cohort bookings or go into a public swim style, but we are excited to have a full season next year.”

A large reason why so many people also took advantage of the pool was because of a partnership that was created between Big Brothers & Big Sisters of Grande Prairie and the City.

The partnership allowed members of Big Brothers Big Sisters to have free swim sessions four times a week. An estimated 1,600 youth were able to take advantage of this partnership.

Way said overall, the partnership was a success.

“Because we were having to follow guidelines from the province in relation to COVID, we had chosen to go into a cohort booking. We knew that some families wouldn’t be able to book out the whole pool, or they didn’t have other cohort families that they would split the cost with. We partnered with Big Brothers & Big Sisters to allow families in who necessarily wouldn’t be able to with the structure put in place.”

The City says that it thanks everyone in the community for keeping the facility safe and following the COVID-19 protocols while attending the pool this summer.