‘I’ve got tears in my eyes’: how the ‘world’s most beautiful pool’ became a multimillion-dollar hole in the ground
It was one of Australia’s most idiosyncratic swimming pools: nine 50-metre saltwater lanes tucked under the base of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, framed by the waterfront on one side and the art deco kitsch of Luna Park on another. North Sydney Olympic Pool fostered the careers of Australian swimming greats including Dawn Fraser, Frank O’Neill and Shane Gould – 86 world records were smashed there – and delivered exercise and respite from the heat to thousands of others.
When it closed for redevelopment in February 2021, veteran members expected to plunge back into the same pool, albeit brought up to world-class standards, late the following year. Three years on, two of them have died while waiting for it to reopen.
“For three years I’ve looked down on to the pool and for three years I’ve seen it standing still and I’ve got tears in my eyes,” says local Ben Forsyth, an avid swimmer and property consultant. “One veteran swam there for 53 years. Before he died, he told me ‘I wish I could leave with one last swim.’ It was heartbreaking.”
Beset with council infighting, claims of pork-barrelling and a lack of transparency, heritage concerns and criticism from health organisations, what has been billed as the “world’s most beautiful pool” has become a gaping hole with the budget blown out to more than $100m and the opening extended to a still unknown date – perhaps 2025.
“This is a really good example of how not to do an infrastructure project,” says the independent federal member for North Sydney, Kylea Tink. Her sentiments echo those of the North Sydney mayor, Zoe Baker, whose council is running and mostly funding the project.
“The community just wanted a pool,” Baker says, wearily.
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If there is a single moment at which the pool plans unravelled, it is as contested as the project itself.
For Tink, problems began in April 2019, when the federal government gave the pool a $10m government grant meant for regional and remote women’s sports. The pre-election cash injection shifted the inner-city project up a gear, she argues, muddying what would have been a relatively straightforward renovation of a historic asset.
The windfall, as Baker puts it, was like winning a raffle in which councillors hadn’t bought a ticket.
“The consequence of suddenly being given $10m more was that the scope of the project had to reopen,” Tink says. From then on, she claims, governance of the project was questionable.
Baker looks further back, to 2018, when consultation was ignored, she says, in favour of a grander, more expensive design than the community wanted. But the former mayor Jilly Gibson, whose tenure oversaw the entire redevelopment planning process and the beginning of the build, believes problems appeared the moment Baker took office in January 2022.
The story began years earlier, in July 2013, with plans for the belated restoration of the pool, which first opened in 1936. The changing rooms were dark and dank, large bubbles occasionally appeared on the bottom of the lap pool, its lining badly in need of repair. Concrete cancer riddled the 25-metre indoor pool’s foundations.
“It was definitely overdue for a refurb,” says freestyle and breaststroke champion Matt Levy, who trained at the pool every day from 2017 until 2020 in preparation for the Tokyo Paralympics.
Community consultation began in 2014, with 1,785 respondents helping to choose one of seven designs. In November 2017 option two was settled upon, with initial costings set at a debt-free $28m.
Related: ‘The best in the world’: a love letter to Australia’s public pools
In March 2019, council updated the budget to $57.9m. Then came the unexpected $10m election sweetener. An additional $5m was provided by the New South Wales government.
The publicly exhibited plans sparked controversy, with the replacement of the indoor pool, built in 2000, mired in heritage concerns and the Cancer Council lambasting the removal of a sun shade over the children’s pool.
Development plans were approved in July 2020. That December, the budget was bumped up to $63.9m. That figure did not include some $4m spent over the previous seven years.
On New Year’s Eve that year came the announcement that the building contract had been awarded to Icon SI, the construction company behind Sydney Olympic Park’s Opal Tower.
Building started on the pool in March 2021. The Covid pandemic, La Niña and the removal of hazardous materials all ate into construction days. Last April, the budget was increased to $86m while an independent review by PricewaterhouseCoopers consultants predicted it to top $89m. The completion date was moved to April 2024.
Then, in November, the entire new steel frame over the indoor pool had to be torn down and recommissioned after the discovery of design and structural “issues”. A further $20m was committed to in February and the opening date revised to “late 2024/early 2025”. The budget exceeded $100m.
Icon SI says it is working collaboratively with council to have the pool completed as soon as possible. “We remain confident that, when completed, the North Sydney pool redevelopment will more than live up to the high standards expected,” a spokesperson said.
We have a community to apologise to.
North Sydney councillor James Spenceley
Today, building is halfway through: in addition to the structural modernisation the 87-year-old pool needed, the swimmers of North Sydney can look forward to a new family play area and creche as well as an updated grandstand, gym and sauna.
“It doesn’t need all the extra activities. It’s too clever by half,” says Forsyth, whose fury over the pool’s mishandling fizzes down the phone line. “Four years for a swimming pool – come on, please.”
With limited options for locals to swim laps, and for young people to learn to swim or hone their competitive edge, he intends to secure 1,000 signatures demanding the reopening of the pool by October.
“We just need to get it done. We just need to know October 1 is the day we’re going to be cutting the ribbon and we’ll put all this behind us,” he says. “We are not going into 2025. No way.”
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Baker, however, refuses to rush.
She claims she is “cleaning up the mess left behind” by the previous council, whose efforts she criticised as “poorly conceived, poorly planned and poorly budgeted” in a mayoral minute – a matter overriding usual council business – in February. Gibson argues that the project was more or less on budget and on time when she left office.
It wasn’t, Baker claims. The New Year’s Eve construction contract was signed before designs were complete and budgets didn’t give the full picture and were inadequate, she argues. Costs including insurance and fit-out were not included.
Between 2018 and 2020, Baker and two allied councillors voted against what she called a “bloated, expensive vanity project” 23 times. She urged the Office of Local Government to act and complained to the ombudsman.
“It is not the bread and butter of councils to do $60m, $70m projects,” she says, arguing that the size of the task swelled beyond the scope of a local council.
But the mayoral minute, argues Gibson, is political and “a load of absolute bollocks”. The $28m budget was only a “rough estimate” and the community wanted a pool for the future, she says.
“The mayor is sounding desperate here. Every single thing that happened with the pool was signed off at an ordinary council meeting.”
In late 2022, PWC was commissioned to review the project and its 16 findings and 33 recommendations were made public last April.
Chief among them was that the project was under-budgeted and that the council unusually entered into separate design and construction contracts, as well as opting to manage the project in-house in an attempt to reduce costs. The construction contract was “expedited”, leading to delays and cost changes, and critical investigative work on the pool was not undertaken. It found no dedicated community consultation was undertaken between agreeing on the $28m option and pushing ahead with the $57.9m plan.
Gibson says the report is “totally flawed” and claims the researchers did not interview her or then general manager Ken Gouldthorp.
Related: Black line fever: the battle to keep Sydney’s public pools afloat
Recriminations aside, Baker is aiming for a seamless rather than a speedy opening – despite Forsyth’s bewilderment and the optics ahead of council elections in September.
“I find it a horrible burden,” Baker says.
Tink looks to federal independent MP Helen Haynes’s anti-pork barrelling bill, introduced to parliament in February, as a welcome, if late, safeguard against another North Sydney pool-style “political folly”.
“It’s actually stained us as a community,” Tink says. “It’s not uncommon to have the North Sydney pool thrown at me in the [federal House of Representatives] chamber as a joke.”
With the massive bill has come the reality that the community will need to share the pool beyond swimming carnivals in an attempt to cover the costs. Charging to host fashion week shows, production companies and private parties – far from the usual remit of a local pool – may help to recoup some of the millions over time.
“We have, I think, a community to apologise to,” North Sydney councillor James Spenceley said in February.
After all, the pool never demanded bells and whistles: its place, historically and geographically, has always given swimmers more than a refit ever could.
