A host of former Olympic swimmers have been treated to a first look at the refurbished North Sydney pool, soon to reopen after years of delays.
The famous art deco pool under the Harbour Bridge, which first opened in 1936, was due to reopen in 2022 after closing for a major refurbishment in 2021, but has been hampered by delays and ballooning costs – which have now reached $122m.
The quick glimpse came at a charity event for the Klim foundation, which was established by the Olympic gold-medallist Michael Klim after his diagnosis with the rare auto-immune disease CIDP. Former teammates, including Ian Thorpe and Daniel Kowalski, gathered to support a fundraising campaign.
The builders will formally hand back the site in the next two to three weeks, the North Sydney mayor, Zoë Baker, said, after which it will take eight to 10 weeks to get the pool ready for the public.
Baker said the council “will still be dealing with the financial and other legacies of the pool, but for users, it’ll be a joy to be back”.
A setback has involved the pipes which bring water from the harbour to fill the pools and heat the outdoor pool to a pleasant 26C, even in the middle of winter.
“There were too many turns in the pipes so they had to redo it to make certain that it pumped at the right volume,” Baker said.
Remaining work includes the painting of heritage stucco seashell reliefs, which will be redecorated in the bright colours of the original design. Much of the site has been rebuilt, although a few original sections remain, including the southern wall with its sundeck.
The pool’s outer rim has a terracotta colour to match surviving bricks from the 1930s, including those in the northern wall, behind which the pool’s gym – known as “Lane 9” – formerly lived.
Following excavation work into the hillside above the pool, a new gym and pilates studio has been added in a basement level underneath the rebuilt grandstand.
The new design pays tribute to elements of the old site, including the use of a frog motif which mimics the reliefs on the surviving eastern stair tower. Tiling at the children’s outdoor pool has been painstakingly reconstructed from a slab of concrete sitting in a council depot. The concrete walls of the new changing area echo the art deco seashell reliefs.
There is also a completely new feature. A hinged wall in the centre of the pool allows it to be transformed from one 50m pool into two 25m pools, creating 16 lanes from eight.
Construction fencing around the pool taken down for the charity event will be put back up while work is completed. The pool has been refilled but it still awaits its first swimmers – only the team that cleans the filtration system has been in the water so far.
