How tiny Kent got $23.5 million to build a new aquatic centre

Big, shining windows. Gleaming blue water in two large pools, floaty toys peppering the rippling surface. Crowds of excited, cartoon swimmers.

That’s the vision that digital renderings present of a $23.5 million, 27,000-square-foot aquatic centre currently under construction in the Fraser Valley. When complete, the Lets’emot Regional Aquatic Centre will have a leisure pool and a lane pool, a whirlpool, a steam room, and a sauna, as well as space for community and activity rooms in a sleek, modern building. The new natatorium could be open as soon as 2026.

But it isn’t the size of the aquatic centre itself that’s most impressive: it’s the size of the town that’s building it—and (partially) paying for it.

The pools

The Lets’emot Regional Aquatic Centre will replace the town’s aging Ferny Coombe pool, an outdoor, seasonal pool that was nearing the end of its life already in 2015. Built nearly 50 years ago, the Ferny Coombe pool was the area’s only public lane-pool north of the Fraser River. It hosted Agassiz’s swim team as well as lessons and programs for kids and adults. While the District of Kent’s mayor, Sylvia Pranger, said the pool has been amazing for the community, the facility also could have been retired a decade ago. “Staff have had to be very, very creative to keep it going,” she said.

Construction of the new aquatic centre, which will be attached to Agassiz’s current recreation and culture centre, is expected to take about 20 months. If construction sticks to the schedule, next summer could be the final season for the limping outdoor pool, with the new aquatic centre opening as soon as 2026. Pranger credits the success of the project so far to the support of the community, vigorous fundraising, and the help of other levels of government (and those who lobbied said governments on behalf of the project.)

The price tag

A $23.5 million recreation facility is a huge undertaking for a municipality with just 6,300 residents. The pool is getting built because the municipality is getting some major help.

While dreams of the major aquatic centre had been around for about two decades, fundraising and planning for Lets’emot started in earnest in 2022 with a $10 million grant from the federal government. Pranger commended Kelli Paddon, who had served as the area’s MLA until October’s election, for her advocacy on the project and work behind the scenes to win both the large Canada Infrastructure Grant and several others. Paddon lost her seat in the BC legislature in the 2024 provincial election.

While the $10 million is no small amount of money, the aquatic centre is expected to cost much more—both to build and to run. Annual operating costs are expected to land between $450,000 and $600,000.

The remaining funding for the pool’s construction is coming from other grants from various levels of government, loans, community fundraising, and Kent’s own reserves. The district has been preparing for the financial costs of the project for some time.

“The district and staff have been working extremely hard to put away reserves over not just this term but previous terms of different councils, knowing that the life of the Fernie Coombe pool was coming to an end,” Pranger said. “Staff have been frugal about putting money away for this huge project.”

But grants and reserves won’t cover everything. Kent staff predict that residents will have to pay about $18 more in property taxes for every $100,000 of assessed value. That money is needed for the municipality to repay loans to build the facility and to cover annual operating costs.

Pranger said that the district was also in discussions with neighbouring communities about agreements to help offset some of the ongoing operating costs. The aquatic centre will also serve residents of Harrison Hot Springs, rural areas like Lake Errock, and several First Naitons, including Cheam, Sts’ailes, Sq'éwqel (Seabird Island), and others.

Small but mighty

The size and scope of the pool facility is not unprecedented in the Fraser Valley, even in the last few years.

The last major aquatics project built on this scale in the Fraser Valley opened in Aldergrove in 2018. The $30-million Aldergrove Credit Union Community Centre became an immensely, almost infamously, popular attraction in the city. The project included an outdoor water park and two covered pools that stay open all year round, as well as an arena and walking track.

But Aldergrove is in the Township of Langley, which is home to about 150,000 people. Kent has less than 7,000. In other words, the small town’s new pool will be nearly the same scale as a project for a city 15 times its size.

Pranger said that the support from the community, however small, has been a big part of the aquatic centre project from the start, but they couldn’t have done it alone. More than $300,000 of the money fundraised so far has come from community members, and plenty more has come from various grants and other partnerships. Last year, Pranger, Cheam First Nation Chief Andrew Victor, and Harrison Hot Springs resident Teresa Omelus Garneau walked 26km from Agassiz to Chilliwack to raise money for the centre.

Despite the huge amount of input and involvement required to make something so big happen somewhere so small, Pranger doesn’t believe that a facility like Lets’emot in a place like Agassiz will be a unicorn. But how does a small town go about following in Agassiz’s footsteps? Just keep swimming, Pranger says.

“Keep dreaming, and work hard at partnering with the province and the federal government and community members. And hope! Just don't give up,” she said. “Really, if you keep at it, it will work, and when the dream actually happens, it's really rewarding.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story identified Seabird Island by the wrong Halq'eméylem name. The error has now been fixed.