Germany: Reconstruction of AquariUM Schwedt – Building Application to be Submitted Shortly

Less than a year after the collapse of the sports pool roof at AquariUM Schwedt, the Stadtwerke Schwedt (municipal utilities) group of companies, as operator of the pool complex, has already made lots of efforts to rebuild the sports pool, to which an adventure water landscape with a tube slide from Aquarena (c.f. EAP 2/21) is also connected. At the end of January this year, all the necessary documents for the deconstruction of the collapsed roof were available, which then started in April and was completed after six weeks.

In order to start the reconstruction of the roof, the new building application is to be submitted to the relevant authorities in the middle of this month. This step had been planned for an earlier date, but due to considerable staff shortages on the part of the planners, the finalization of the new fire protection concept required for the application was delayed. Stadtwerke Schwedt now hopes that construction work will begin in September of this year so that the basic construction of the new roof can be completed before the onset of winter. The completion of the complete roof, including insulation, is not expected until the first quarter of 2023 due to the current delivery problems with regard to the necessary construction material. Special attention is also being paid in this construction phase to the roof of the adjacent adventure pool, as moisture has penetrated the insulation due to the long period of free standing and the weather, so that extensive renovation work is now necessary.

As soon as the roof work is completed, the interior finishing measures that were originally planned as part of the pool modernization prior to the roof collapse (including the re-laying of pool tiles, installation of a timing system and starting blocks, reactivation of the facility’s technology) are to be taken up. According to current planning, this work will continue until July 2023.

“We are currently planning to reopen the pool at the start of the new school year in 2023. The extent to which the outdoor facilities of the pool can be used already again during the summer vacations is currently difficult to calculate and can only be implemented at short notice in line with the progress of construction work,” explains Dirk Sasson, Managing Director of Stadtwerke Schwedt and adds, “We are of course aware that the swimming club and schools in particular are desperately waiting for their training and swimming facilities to be reopened. The people of Schwedt can be sure that we are doing our best. [...]“. (eap)