Old Leisure Pool Site to Get Flats and a Care Home, Ending Years of Locals Standing Outside It Remembering the Flumes
Residents ask for 'one wee wave machine in the communal garden, for heritage'.
Perth's leisure pool site, scene of a thousand damp childhood memories. Photo: David Brown, “Car park, Perth Leisure Pool - geograph.org.uk - 5902419”, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
PERTH — Plans for a 60-bed care home and around 100 flats on the site of the former Perth Leisure Pool have been defended by their backers, as the city’s nostalgic residents mourn “the end of the flume era.”
“I learned to swim there. I lost a verruca sock there. I lost my dignity on the wave machine in 1993,” said one Letham man. “Will anyone in those flats ever bang their elbow on that one bit of the yellow tube? I doubt it.”
The scheme’s backers say the new home would replace an ageing facility, while objectors have raised flood concerns, in what one planning expert called “the only argument in Perth that is entirely about water and has nothing to do with swimming.”
Residents have suggested heritage features, including a mosaic of the diving board, a commemorative chlorine smell in the stairwells, and a plaque reading “Here Lay the Wave Machine: It Was Never Quite Strong Enough.”
The real story: Perth 60-bed care home plans for former leisure pool site defended (Daily Record)
Letters to the Editor
The views expressed are those of the reader, and frankly that's on them.
No letters yet. The town is uncharacteristically quiet.
Write to the Editor