For more than seven years, rumours about the closure have ebbed and flowed in the community, with the latest round of Chinese whispers based on proposals put forward by Sydney project designers Spackman, Mossop and Michaels for the Bicentennial Park redevelopment.

The master plans shows a park space on the pool’s site, on the corner of Bridge St and Kable Ave.

Resident and solicitor Patrick O’Halloran was so convinced Tamworth Regional Council was going to close the Tamworth Olympic Pool, earlier this month he circulated letters to several residents imploring them to write to council asking for the pool to remain open.

But after the letters were sent out, council’s Simon Hare, who is involved in the redevelopment’s planning process, told Mr O’Halloran council wasn’t going to close the pool and that it would remain open until stage two of the proposed aquatic centre.

Mr O’Halloran said there had been some ambiguity from council about the pool’s future, which led to some people being

confused.

“We all thought that, with the redevelopment of Bicentennial Park, the pool would close automatically,” Mr O’Halloran said.

“We were in the dark. Most of us thought it was going to close automatically.”

Council general manager Glenn Inglis said people were over-reading on some of the Bicentennial Park plans.

“There is a couple of sketches with some buildings on that (pool) site,” Mr Inglis said.

“But that is purely there from the perspective of if the council ever did close the pool, it had some suggestions about the sorts of things you could put there.

“There is no proposal to close the Olympic pool.”

He said the only time he would imagine the pool would be closed was if it ended up forming part of the proposed new aquatic centre.

“In other words, the day the council decides to build the new aquatic centre, that may be one of the considerations. The council of the day will make that decision,” he said.

He said Tamworth had two Olympic-sized swimming pools that were old and expensive to maintain. An option for the aquatic centre was closing one pool to save money.

“That’ll be all part of the business plan that gets put together over the next 12 months.”

Council has allocated $175,000 in the draft 2009-12 budget to undertake detailed designs and a business and operational plan for the aquatic centre.