Lakeside Leisure Centre, Brooks, Alberta

The Town of Brooks is a vibrant, growing community of over 12,000 (in 2005) located two hours southeast of Calgary. The development and construction of this facility represents a change in the Town's philosophy toward their leisure services. They have gone from a sports oriented model to a primarily leisure oriented model. This 12,500 square metre facility was designed to service a much wider demographic, from youth through to seniors.

The Lakeside Leisure Centre is a phased project which started with the replacement of the old arena with a new 1,250 seat arena, and upgrade, expansion and conversion to an existing twinned arena/curling complex and program rooms, construction of a new lap pool and conversion of the old gym into a new wave leisure pool. The design team met the challenge of having the existing facility remain open with as little disruption or shutdown as possible. The final phase of the development will be a new NHL-configured arena and improvements to the facility’s efficiency.

In developing this project the Town of Brooks wanted to include the most popular features of modern aquatic facilities; one in particular being a wave machine. The design of a wave pool tank requires an understanding of the waves; the physics, the actions, and the direction the wave will travel across the pool. This knowledge is used to develop a low profile wave tank and avoid a huge freeboard, which doesn't make pools very attractive. By working with a maximum two foot wave height and understanding how wave size diminishes as it travels towards the "beach" the design team is able to reduce the freeboard accordingly. The result is an attractive pool rather than a cistern.

VDA worked as specialist pool consultant to Sahuri Hutchinson Brzezinski Architects Inc. of Calgary.