Last November we got a look at the newly-constructed Tokyo Aquatics Center, site for the swimming, diving, artistic swimming and several Para Swimming events at this year’s Summer Olympic Games.
Located in Tatsumi Seaside Park in Koto Ward, the Aquatics Center’s construction was considered 75% complete in August of 2019 and 90% complete as of October of last year, with a goal completion month of February of 2020.
The date of the official ribbon-cutting ceremony has now been set, with the facility opening its doors on Sunday, March 22nd.
Per Nikkan Sports, newly-appointed Japanese Olympic swimming team captain Daiya Seto will be part of the ceremony. He’ll be joined by 5-time Olympic diver Ken Terauchi and artistic swimmer Noriko Inui.
The estimated cost of the more than 700,000 square foot facility hovers around ¥56.7 billion, which converts to approximately $500 million USD. The space will accommodate 15,000 seats of which 60% have already been installed. More than 1% of the seating areas will be reserved for people in wheelchairs in accordance with disability guidelines.
The official ‘READY STEADY TOKYO’ swimming test event is slated for April 14th-15th, although the venue listed for the 2020 Japan Swim is indeed the Tokyo Aquatics Center. That meet, which represents the sole Olympic-qualifying opportunity for Japanese athletes, is scheduled for April 1-8th.
I’d love to see LA spend half a billion on a new swimming pool. Can you imagine spending that much money when you have such a huge homeless problem
It is just priorities….you could also say a city of LAs size should have a world class pool and it would cost about the same price as 0.001 of your annual defense budget.
I’ll say it: this pool is precisely the problem with the Olympics that will lead to its downfall. No matter how nice a pool is, there’s no way that it will ever recoup its money on $500 million, no matter how many ways you fudge tax revenues and ‘tourism dollars’ into the equation. Unless ISL takes off to an extent where this pool is filled every weekend of the year for a decade or more, and those fans are spending a lot of money on alcohol and food and everything else marked up inside the arena…there’s no way you ever break even, let alone turn a profit or account for the Time Value of Money.
That’s exactly true, Braden. That’s the reason why Salt Lake City (albeit a Winter Olympics) is the only Olympics in recent history to gain a revenue instead of lose money — they used existing facilities and simply repurposed them. Building all new facilities is the reason why the Olympics always loses money, but on the other hand, there are very few cities that could simply repurpose existing facilities—although LA is one of those cities.
If it works, and if it sticks to plan, I think LA could be one of the most organizationally brilliant Olympics in the modern era. Using the college campuses as the media village, for example? It’s so obvious! You’ve got these massive, massive campuses full of rooms and dining halls and meeting rooms and support buildings of all shape and size, all already wired for large scale internet use, and while not completely empty, being vastly underutilized in the summer months.
It’s so obvious that it hurts.
Getting such London vibes from this pool – looks amazing, nothing compared to the crap in Rio (which has now been destroyed I may add)
The Rio pool was always designed to be removed- but it is sad to see it crumbling.
Wow, perfect pool. Tons of seating and that aquatic timing system and display board looks incredible.