New housing likely for former Coventry baths site
The council has ruled out reusing Central Baths, saying the site could be redeveloped to provide quality city centre homes
Coventry City Council has ruled out any reuse of the former swimming baths building and says it has the potential to be redeveloped into a good quality city centre housing scheme.
Central Baths, the swimming pool facility at Coventry Sports and Leisure Centre in Fairfax Street, opened in 1966.
The Grade II-listed, council-owned structure held a 50m Olympic-sized pool but has been shut since February 2020 after the council declared it had “come to its natural end” due to escalating maintenance costs of £400,000 a year.
In May, the Government granted approval for the demolition of the site. The adjacent section of the complex, known as The Elephant, is not included in the demolition proposals.
At a meeting of the Business, Economy and Enterprise Scrutiny Board, councillors heard that putting new homes on the land was the most favoured option.
Steve Weir, the council’s interim director of economic growth, confirmed to the meeting that the council planned to redevelop the former swimming bath on Fairfax Street and said it had the potential for a scheme to come forward to turn it into “a really good quality city centre housing site.”
Scrutiny board chairman Cllr Stephen Gray (Green, Holbrooks) said: “It sounds like you have given up on any possibility of reusing the buildings. If something came in that might be able to actually use the building as it is, would that still be potentially considered?”
Cllr Lynnette Kelly, the Cabinet Member for Jobs, Regeneration and Climate Change, ruled that out immediately, explaining: “The building is unsafe. We’ve not allowed anybody to go in at the moment because it is unsafe.
“So the chances of somebody coming along and thinking they can repurpose that building are minute. That’s just the function of it being so old and empty for such a long time.
“In my view, the only safe thing to do is demolish it and build something else on the site.
“We’ve had a couple of people put requests to go in for a short period of time, to film things, or various things like that, and we’ve told them no, it’s not safe, so I don’t think that’s very likely.”
Campaigners at the Coventry Society have opposed the idea of demolishing the pool without firm plans for what would replace it.
They say the focus must now shift from disappointment over the demolition to a discussion about what happens to the site after that. The society fears more student accommodation could end up there.
The council previously said it had tried to get the baths repurposed but the huge upfront cost to any new owner of refurbishing and modernising the 1960s facility had proved too great.