The Best Outcome for Tynemouth Outdoor Pool

10th Jan 2024 by Luan Hanratty

The Sunrise Cycleway may be unpopular, but that doesn’t change the new reality — that it’s going to fundamentally alter how people behave at and interact with the seafront. This new piece of infrastructure will lead to healthier outcomes for local people, and the outdoor pool has to be a focal point for that.

This is just a suggestion of how it could be.

Ground floor (beach level) and 1st floor: Colonnaded arcade fostering all kinds of small-scale commercial possibilities for a corner of the seafront that really ought to be bustling.

2rd floor: Spa pools, sauna and steam rooms or gym. We’ve seen how popular pop-up saunas can be on the beaches locally.

3rd floor: This could be a luxury clubhouse bar with an unrivalled view along the region’s finest beach.

4th floor: Rooftop terrace at street level. This is a large accessible space that perfectly fits the bowl shape of the bankside and can accommodate many ideas.

The beauty of this structure is that it tops out at street level, blocking no views and seamlessly joining the walkway and the cycleway.

Even more ideal would be a tram line along Percy Park Road from the Victoria monument on Front Street. This wouldn’t need to be a vintage tram, but a genuine piece of public transport that gets people to the beach and provides a preferable alternative to cars after Grand Parade is made one-way.

This whole vision may not chime with the current plans for the place, but it’s vital to ask people what they want. The pool’s regeneration should reflect the wishes of the community and I’d wager that the community would love to see a genuine homage to the Plaza on this stretch of coast.

Such a project would not be cheap to build. Sandstone ashlar is expensive, but investments like this put Tynemouth on the map and bring it back to the role it’s meant to play in the region and in the country.

More than anything, this kind of flagship development would through business rates, fund the running of the pool, while creating a trade hotspot on the seafront that provides an ideal counterpoint to the Tynemouth Castle Inn, half a mile up the sands.

Tynemouth shouldn’t languish below its potential because of a lack of ambition.