The Marx Dormoy Olympic swimming pool, in the Bois-Blancs district, is made up of two pools (one of which is Olympic, the only one in the Lille metropolitan area). It hosts sports competitions and many sports associations, as well as activities supervised by the lifeguards of the City of Lille: swimming, aquagym, gentle aqua, aquabile, competitive swimming.
The swimming pool dates from 1972, more than 50 years. The numerous studies carried out by the city’s technical services, corroborated by the diagnosis carried out by the European Metropolis of Lille in 2022, concluded that the maximum capacity of use of Marx Dormoy would be limited to three years, which brings us to 2025. The City of Lille has therefore proposed a project temporary basinto compensate for the upcoming closure of the Bois-Blancs swimming pool.
50 meter pool
Arnaud Deslandes, First Deputy Mayor of Lille, during the municipal council meeting of June 20, 2024: “In anticipation, we have been working on the temporary basin project for several months with the MEL, and we have opted for a 50 meter poolbecause as we only had one on the territory, if we did not have a temporary one, we would no longer have any, which would put the high-level teams in difficulty, and there is also a school demand for which a sufficiently large pool is needed. Once these two priorities have been taken into account, we will look at the possibility of opening it to the widest possible public. But we are first responding to the priority of welcoming high-level and school teams.”
The site: boulevard de Strasbourg
Where will the future temporary swimming pool in Lille be located? The City of Lille has chosen theformer Marcel Bertrand wasteland, boulevard de Strasbourg, near Porte d’Arras. Why? Arnaud Deslandes explains: “Firstly because the land is controlled by the City, which allows us to be faster, we also have proximity to public transport between the metro at Porte d’Arras and the metro at Porte des Postes. And we have the possibility of having a connection to the urban heating network to operate this swimming pool in the best conditions”.
Costs of the operation
The total cost of the operation amounts to 10 or 11 million euros, including the investment in the basin itself, all the investments in creating changing rooms, showers, a reception area, the development elements around the site, in particular taking into account the issues of the tramway and the Sdit (Transport Infrastructure Master Plan).
The City of Lille will have funding and co-funding from the MEL as part of its “pool plan 2”, and as part of a global approach to integration on the site.
Regarding operating costs, they are estimated today at 750,000 euros per year, or 250,000 euros less than at Marx Dormoy today, which is the most energy-intensive facility in the city. “We also want to turn this constraint into an opportunity in terms of environmental regulation issues,” concludes the elected official.
The activities of the nautical base and clubs will be maintained on the Marx Dormoy site.
> Practical information on the Marx Dormoy swimming pool
