Long before the first drop of salty water starts to fill the gleaming, white-tiled surface of the redeveloped North Sydney Olympic Pool, swimmers have been holding their collective breath for its much-delayed reopening.
The $122 million project took a step towards completion at the weekend with the dismantling of the construction crane, which has towered over the revamp as debate simmered over cascading cost blowouts, delays, variations, legal fights and myriad concerns over its scale, design and heritage impacts.
More than four years after the pool closed in February 2021 with the promise it would reopen as a dazzling aquatic centre in November 2022, North Sydney Council’s director of open space and infrastructure, Gary Parsons, believes the crane’s removal has signalled that the end of construction is finally in sight.
“We’ve still got a little way to go, but in the last two months we’ve been more certain of a November finish than we have been before. We’re reasonably confident we’ll be finished this side of Christmas,” Parsons said on Monday.
Even then, the wait for a dip at the Milsons Point pool will not be over.
Developer Icon is scheduled to hand over the completed pool to the council on November 18, but it will be two to three months before it is ready to open.
Workers will soon start to tile the indoor pool area – a task they estimate will take at least 30 days – before the pools can be finished and filled with water.
Mayor Zoe Baker scotched the prospect of a lavish opening and said the venue’s first days would be “very community focused and low-key”.
“The community’s waited long enough,” she said.
Swimmers who pour through the turnstiles on the top floor of the three-storey complex will be met with gun-barrel views of the harbour, and two 25-metre indoor recreation pools, as well as a kiosk, spa and sauna. The second floor houses an expansive glass-walled gym overlooking the outdoor pools.
The crane is down, but work continues to complete the pool by Christmas.Credit: Steven Siewert
At ground level, the 50-metre pool will be complemented by a children’s splash pool and water play area, rooms for reformer Pilates and children’s parties, offices for staff and lifeguards, change rooms and the Ripples cafe.
The venue will include a gelato bar, reconstructed sundeck and grandstand. The outdoor pool will feature a wheelchair ramp, electronic timing pads and a floating barrier to split the pool into two 25-metre-long swimming areas.
The pool will be filled with treated saltwater drawn from the harbour.
Inside, historic images of the pool and some of the famous swimmers who competed and set records there – among them Dawn Fraser, Shane Gould and Murray Rose – will be projected onto the wall of a “hall of fame” walkway.
Only three sections of the original pool, which opened in 1936, remain: the eastern stair tower, the eastern wall with its art deco-style design facing the harbour, and the Aqua Dining restaurant, which will reopen at the complex.
Completion is a step closer, but don’t expect to swim in the pool this year.Credit: Steven Siewert
Baker was a long-time critic of the previous council’s handling of the pool project when a councillor, repeatedly raising alarm bells about its cost and scale, and calling for the council to undertake a simpler renovation.
Among the more extravagant details are the underfloor heating and swimsuit dryer in the change rooms, expensive parquetry floors in the children’s party rooms, and brass frog motifs that have been inlaid in the tiles around the outdoor pool, inspired by frogs depicted in the eastern wall, costing $42,000.
Baker said: “Those finishes were specified in the development consent and in the building contract. They’re part of the cost of the project that we just have to manage and deliver. But some of those finishes, like the frogs from the heritage interpretation embedded in the tiles – while expensive – I think when the pool opens, they’ll bring a lot of whimsy and joy to those who visit.”
The cost of the project has nearly doubled from an initial estimate of $58 million, forcing the cash-strapped council to consider cutting services, lifting fees and selling assets after a plan to increase rates by 87 per cent was rejected.
One of the main contributors to the ballooning cost and timeframe for the project, the council says, was the need to tear down the steel roof frame for the indoor pool in 2023 due to significant design and construction flaws.
An artist’s impression of the completed aquatic centre.Credit:
In May, Icon launched legal action against the council, claiming the council had breached its contract by repeatedly revising designs for a pool roof structure.
Separately, the council is mired in another legal battle with Brewster Hjorth Architects over costs and delays caused by the roof, which had to be replaced.
Icon said on Monday that the company was “absolutely focused on the completion of the North Sydney Pool redevelopment and continues to work constructively with council as we progress the project” before the handover.
“While we recognise community expectations are high, we are confident the redevelopment will meet the standards expected for a heritage project in an iconic location on Sydney Harbour,” the spokesman said.
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Baker admitted the redevelopment had proved “extraordinarily difficult”, but she hoped that, for members of the public, those challenges would be eclipsed by the “great joy of swimming” in the pool when it reopened.
“The great charm of North Sydney Olympic Pool is the location, and when you’re standing on the grandstand, looking down at the 50-metre pool and the most exceptional view and angle of the Harbour Bridge and the working harbour, flanked by the Luna Park towers and face – it’s hard not to smile.”
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