EDMONTON – City staff promised to cost out a simple beach and spray park in Hawrelak Park after council reacted against a $60-million plan for swimming in the park’s lake.
“I don’t want to spend fortunes on this thing,” said Mayor Stephen Mandel, who originally brought the idea to administration.
“This isn’t for swimming laps,” he told Monday’s community services committee meeting. “This is about little kids – three, four, five years of age. Just something for kids to enjoy.”
Mandel said his vision should cost “a couple million,” definitely less than $5 million. He would like to use the existing change rooms available for skating in the winter and create a beach and water feature to give a lake experience to Edmonton kids who can’t afford to travel to the closest swimmable lake outside the city.
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Canoe rentals on-site and other amenities would make the lake more accessible during the summer.
“How much does it cost to buy sand? It ain’t that expensive,” Mandel said. “Don’t always look for the problem, find a way to make it work.
“Sixty-million was never my vision. We’re trying to deliver services for citizens, not bankrupt them.”
Getting the lake ready for swimming would be expensive because of the filtration needed to keep all the goose waste out, said Linda Cochrane, general manager for community services.
Because the lake is man-made, built in an old gravel pit, it has no natural flow in and out to circulate the water. A river, for example, would be much easier to keep clean, she said.
“It’s a body of water that has a very shallow depth and a long history of geese,” she said.
As for Mandel’s idea of a beach and spray park using existing change facilities, “what we need to do is go back and flesh that out,” Cochrane said. “The challenge for us is to be more creative.”
The topic will return to the community services committee for discussion once that work is complete.
In 2008, city council passed an outdoor aquatic strategy that recommended against natural swimming in the North Saskatchewan River valley. Mandel has been trying to find an alternative ever since.
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