The City of Victoria has confirmed that the former YMCA-YWCA building has been impacted by “significant damage” caused by a water leak.
The building, located at 851 Broughton Street, was meant to be used by the City as a recreation space while the $209.2 million Crystal Pool replacement facility was constructed in Central Park.
The YMCA-YWCA building was vacated in March, and the City planned on moving in when the current Crystal Pool facility is demolished this fall.
This water leak may cause this plan to be altered, but the City has yet to verify what the impact will be.
Currently the YMCA-YWCA facility is unoccupied, since the organization moved its operations to the top floor of the Bay Centre in downtown Victoria when they vacated the premises.
The City held a press conference at city hall just after noon on Wednesday, June 17th to release more information on the situation.
There, Derrick Newman, Victoria’s director of parks, recreation and facilities, stated that a water line leak in a utility closet was the cause of the damage. The leak was discovered on Monday, June 15th.
“Staff arrived on the scene and immediately identified that there was water, shut off the water main and identified the source of the leak which was on the third floor of the facility,” said Newman.
“Their initial observations was there had been a significant amount of water cascading down the stairwells, through the walls and through the ceilings.”
He noted that the City does not yet have a detailed understanding of the full extent of the damage at this point, but the first, second and third floors all sustained water damage.
According to Newman, none of the work to transition Crystal Pool’s operations to the former YMCA-YWCA had been initiated at this point.
He says that the City has just begun processes to assess the extent of the damage, whether insurance will be able to cover the costs and if the site will still be a viable option for Crystal Pool’s transition.
“Unfortunately, this incident is a bit of a setback for us and we need to understand the implications of this water damage and what remediation might look like before we can understand whether there’s any impact to those plans,” he said.
“The City’s immediate focus right now is to mitigate any further damage to the facility and to begin the remediation work in order to clean things up.”
Currently, City parks and recreation staff are onsite working to clear any remaining water from the building before a professional remediation company can be contracted to assess and clean up the site.
Newman said that when the City knows more about the situation and how it will impact the Crystal Pool transition, further information will be released.
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