Adelaide’s $135m Aquatic Centre Boosts Inner North
A $135-million redevelopment of a popular Adelaide community facility is expected to help drive growth in the capital’s inner north.
The Adelaide Aquatic Centre will open on Monday’s Australia Day holiday to ballot winners and then to the public on Tuesday.
The new facility at the former site of the city pool includes a 50m indoor pool, warm-water rehabilitation facilities, and learn-to-swim pools.
Refreshed landscaping on the site in the North Adelaide parklands between Barton and Fitzroy terraces includes 355 new trees.
The centre’s four 13m-high waterslides are in place and will send thrillseekers on a swirly descent at speeds of up to 40 kilometres an hour.
Covering a combined 355m, the slides snake in and out of the centre, finishing in an indoor splash zone.
The centre also features a rain curtain and giant ray and jellyfish installations.
Built by Adelaide-based Sarah Constructions, the centre was designed by Adelaide-based JPE Design Studio, international architecture firm Warren and Mahoney and senior South Australian Aboriginal man Karl Winda Telfer.
The centre includes 52 timber beams and columns that are up to 37m long, including a 10.28-tonne beam that is the largest of its kind in Australia.
The beams and columns were milled in Austria, transported 1200km to Belgium, shipped 26,000km down to Melbourne then transported by trucks to Adelaide under police escort.
The indoor 50m pool will be a 10-lane one heated to 27 degrees. An outdoor 25m, eight-lane pool will be heated to between 26C and 28C year round.
The centre has more than 300,000 tiles, a kilometre-plus of underground plumbing, four million litres of water across six pools and will be fully powered by renewable energy.
After 50 years of operation, the former Adelaide Aquatic Centre closed on the site in July 2024 to make way for the new centre.
YMCA Aquatic will operate the new centre, which provided 1500 jobs during construction.
Royal Life Saving Australia general manager capability and industry R.J. Houston said research conducted in 2025 showed that for every dollar spent on Australia’s aquatic facilities there was a social return of $5.40.
“Community aquatic facilities are much loved spaces for people to come together to learn swimming and water safety skills and participate in recreation under the safe supervision of professional lifeguards,” he said.
“This is why Australian aquatic facilities are visited 421 million times a year, making them Australia’s most popular aquatic environments.”
Houston said that one-in-four Australians in 2025 were disadvantaged when it came to accessing an aquatic centre, and that under current budgetary and program settings this was likely to rise to one-in-three in 2032.
Royal Life Saving Australia staff were onsite this week reviewing the safety of the centre’s design.
