Richmond moves to expropriate Watermania as lease nears 2027 expiry

Richmond has operated Watermania for nearly three decades, but it has never owned the building. Now the City is trying to change that by expropriating the aquatic centre from its private landowner, months before the long-term lease runs out in March 2027.

The City's formal notice, dated July 3, 2026, was filed with the Land Title Office on July 6, according to records retrieved by Daily Hive Vancouver. It names 14300 Entertainment Blvd. Investments as the registered owner. For Richmond swimmers, the stakes are practical: Watermania is one of the city's two year-round indoor pools, and the City says its aim is to keep it a public facility.

The notice says taking the property serves the public interest by ensuring Watermania keeps providing essential community services as a public indoor aquatic centre and fitness facility. It gives no purchase price and no compensation offer.

The landowner has started a formal independent inquiry into the expropriation, scheduled to begin in late November 2026. Outgoing Mayor Brodie said the City uses expropriation very infrequently and avoids it whenever possible, and that its goal is to secure Watermania's long-term future. He added that further comment would be inappropriate while the inquiry is under way.

Watermania sits in the Riverport Sports and Entertainment Complex in southeast Richmond. It has a 57-metre competition pool with a movable bulkhead, as well as an indoor wave pool with two waterslides.

The arrangement dates to the 1990s. Richmond voters approved borrowing of about $20 million in a 1993 referendum to build a publicly owned aquatic centre on City-owned land. Watermania opened in 1997 and the City took on operating it. Today, though, the City is the tenant and operator and owns neither the building nor the land beneath it.

It has bought in nearby before. The City acquired the adjacent Richmond Ice Centre in 2019, which brought that six-rink building and its land into municipal ownership.

BC Assessment's latest roll puts Watermania's assessed value at $49.4 million as of July 1, 2025, split between $27.41 million for the land and $21.99 million for the building. The agency's 2027 roll, expected in January 2027, will reflect values as of July 1, 2026.

The site also sits inside a land claim area that is before the courts. In August 2025, BC Supreme Court Justice Barbara Young granted Cowichan Tribes Aboriginal title over about 740 acres of public and privately owned land north and east of the Riverport complex. A City map shows the broader 1,846-acre claim area includes the Riverport complex, Watermania among it.

Richmond, the federal and provincial governments, and the Musqueam and Tsawwassen First Nations have appealed the decision. Cowichan Tribes has filed its own appeal.

The independent inquiry in late November is the next step to watch, and it will come before the lease expires in March 2027.