After over a decade of Regina residents calling for a new aquatic centre, the City of Regina has moved one step closer to making that a reality.

At Wednesday’s city council meeting, council unanimously approved applying to the federal government’s Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP) and utilizing the remaining $128 million that has been allocated to the City.

The $128 million would see $108 million would be used to build the Indoor Aquatics Facility, with $20 million used for a Geothermal Heating Facility.

ICIP funding is cost-shared, with 40 per cent of the total coming from the federal government, 33.3 per cent from the provincial government, and the remaining 26.7 per cent coming from the city government.

The centre was also approved to be built at the current Lawson Aquatic Centre site. Barring any problems with that site, a secondary site was chosen.

Should “the Lawson site be compromised, the secondary site consideration for the New Aquatic Centre should be at the Yards,” according to the catalyst committee report.

The City now must wait for the federal government to approve its use of funds.

If approved, the facility would employ 100 staff members and would have many amenities, including:

• 2x 50m competition pools with supporting spaces
• Spectator seating on 2nd level
• Leisure Aquatics /Waterpark area that could include amenities like an: wave pool, lazy river, waterslides, play/splash structures, hot tubs, teach pool, deck viewing areas
• Multi-use spaces including therapy, fitness centre, fitness studios, community spaces, indoor children’s playground, social gathering areas, gymnasium
• Cultural, Multi-purpose, Cafe & Lease spaces

Mayor Sandra Masters said while the project still has to wait for federal approval, it feels good to see progress made.

“We’ve been working on it, advocating for that funding for quite some time now, hopefully for that,” she said. “It actually feels like we are doing something.”

For Masters, she also becomes one step closer to making good on one of her campaign promises.

“One of the reasons I made that parts of my campaign was a little bit of frustration with plans being performed and not being actioned on,” she said. “It’s satisfying to know that we’ve gone through the next hurdle where we got unanimous support from those present, and hopefully, we will get the funding, and I think it will be quite an incredible facility at the end of the day.”

“If we can proceed with this, it positions us really well in terms of continuing not just serve our community and grow our community, but to host events as well for some of our competitive teams and to really expand kids’ opportunities to participate in competitive sports,” she continued.

As for how confident the Mayor is that it will receive approval, Masters was hopeful.

“The federal government still has the ability to approve, but we know the inclusion of geothermal is incredibly attractive because they are incredibly supportive of alternate sources of heating and energy,” she noted. “We are feeling very positive about it, but ultimately at the end of the day, it will be up to the federal government to say yes or no.”

If approved, city administration said they would move into the design stage next.

“That will take 18 months, and we would anticipate construction to begin in late 2024, the beginning of 2025, with the pool facility being open in 2028,” they said.

Councillor Bob Hawkins brought forward an undertaking that city administration look to see if it would cut down the building of the facility from around 60 months to 36 months.