Historic Riverside Park pool unearthed as construction of outdoor skating rink moves forward

Old pool unearthed in park

Photo: Josh Dawson

It's out with the old and in with the new at Riverside Park, where city crews are working to remove a long-buried swimming pool to make way for a new skating rink.

City council approved plans to construct the outdoor rink last year to the tune of $5.4 million, which has come from the province’s Growing Communities Fund.

Adam Gordon, project delivery manager with the City of Kamloops said portions of the former Riverside Park Centennial Pool are being removed to accommodate the new build.

“What we’re installing is like structural concrete, we can’t have, from a geotechnical perspective, any of the pool deck still there beneath where we’re putting the ice surface,” he said.

“So we have to go as deep as the pool deck and pick it up and take it out.”

He said the pool deck is thicker than crews anticipated but the project is still on schedule.

The new rink is expected to open to skaters by the winter of 2025-26. While it was originally planned to open next winter, the timeline was extended due to the amount of work involved.

Gordon said work is “progressing quite well.”

“All of our permits are now in place, we recently got our building permit for the Zamboni building, which were hoping to start foundation work on rather soon as well,” he said.

He said the purchase of a $140,000 Zamboni has been finalized, as well.

“It’s a fairly standard model, but we needed to make sure it was one that could handle some of the tighter and wonkier corners that are going to be coming with this — sort of a non-standard shape surface for sure,” Gordon said.

The old Riverside Park pool was built as part of the B.C. centennial celebrations of 1958. It opened in July of 1959 and it was decommissioned and buried in 1993.