Mundy Park Pool Reopens May 30, 2026: Inside Coquitlam’s $32M Outdoor Reset

The headline: May 30, 2026 is opening day for the season

If you’ve driven past 655 Hillcrest Street any time in the last three years, you’ve watched the bones of a 1970s-era community landmark come down and a brand-new aquatic facility rise in its place. The pool — known to a generation of Coquitlam kids as the Spani Outdoor Pool, and now officially called Mundy Park Outdoor Pool — reopens for the 2026 summer season on Friday, May 30, 2026, with drop-in admission held at $2 and additional daily capacity compared to 2025.

This isn’t an “opening.” It’s the second season of a facility that quietly became one of the most popular summer destinations in the Tri-Cities last year. From the May 30 opening through October 2025, the renewed pool logged more than 106,000 admissions — nearly twice the capacity of the original 1970 facility — and just under 1,200 participants in swimming lessons, certification programs, and camps.

For families who live near Mundy Park, this is the amenity that anchors summer. For buyers thinking about Central Coquitlam, Austin Heights, or any of the residential pockets that ring the park, it’s part of the lifestyle math that makes this corner of the city quietly compelling.

By the numbers

What you’ll actually find when you walk in

The previous Spani Outdoor Pool was a single rectangular 25-metre tank in a fenced concrete deck with a small concession building. It served Coquitlam for 55 summers — opening day was May 29, 1970 — and by the end it was running well past its design life. What replaced it is a different category of facility.

Three separate pools, not one

The renewed site has three distinct bodies of water, each tuned to a different use:

• The refurbished 25-metre lap pool with eight lanes and a dedicated dive tank. This is the home of the Coquitlam Sharks Aquatics Club and the “Sharks in the Park” annual meet, and it handles lessons, lane swimming, and certification programs.
• A new leisure pool built specifically for families and casual swimmers. Shallow beach entry (zero-depth, so strollers and mobility devices can roll in), interactive splash features, a lazy river, a water climbing wall/obstacle course, and a 1.2-metre-deep play zone.
• A new warming/whirl pool set close to the forest edge — designed to extend usability into the shoulder weeks of the season and give parents a place to sit while kids burn off energy in the leisure pool.

The architectural firm behind the redesign is FaulknerBrowns, an international practice with European hubs in Newcastle and Dublin and its only North American office in Vancouver. Vancouver-based HCMA conducted the initial feasibility study, and Graham Construction delivered the build. The result is a facility that reads more like a destination than a neighbourhood pool — but priced like a neighbourhood pool, because the City held drop-in admission at $2.

The on-deck experience

The footprint of the facility nearly doubled. There’s an expanded deck for lounging, dedicated spectator seating for swim meets, a social lawn for sunbathing and picnic blankets, gendered and universal change rooms, year-round universal washrooms accessible from Mundy Park (separate from the pool entry, so park users have a real bathroom without paying admission), a multipurpose room used for workshops and certifications, and a Canuel Caterers concession.

If you’ve been to the old Spani Pool, the most striking difference is the relationship to the forest. The leisure pool and warming pool are tucked right against the conifer edge of Mundy Park, so even on the busiest July afternoon, you have a wall of green at your back rather than the parking lot.

Hours, admission, and how to plan a visit

Here’s the operating schedule the City has published for the 2026 season:

Swimming lessons and camps

Summer swimming lesson and swim camp registration opened to Coquitlam residents on April 28, 2026. If you missed that window, non-resident registration follows shortly after, and lessons run in two-week blocks through August. Filtering by location for “Mundy Park Pool” at the City’s registration portal pulls everything in one view, or you can call the recreation booking line at 604-927-4386.

Parking and getting there

The pool’s main lot sits off Hillcrest Street, with overflow on Mariner Way. On peak summer weekends, parking near the pool itself fills early — but Mundy Park has multiple secondary lots (Chilko Drive, Mundy Street, the field-house lot off Como Lake Avenue) and the walk in through the forest trails is genuinely pleasant if you arrive after 11 a.m.

By transit, the closest TransLink connection is the No. 152 bus along Como Lake Avenue, with a short walk south through the park. If you’re cycling, the perimeter community pathway connects Mundy Park to the broader Coquitlam bike network.

Mundy Park itself: the 178-hectare urban forest at your doorstep

To understand why the new pool matters as much as it does, you have to understand Mundy Park. This isn’t a postage-stamp neighbourhood green space. Mundy Park is 178 hectares — about 435 acres — of urban forest, lakes, sports fields, and trails. It’s the largest park in Coquitlam, and it sits inside the city’s residential core. Nowhere else in the Tri-Cities do you have a temperate rainforest of that scale walkable from single-family neighbourhoods.

The trail network

The headline trail is the 5.5-kilometre Perimeter Community Pathway (also called the Mundy Park Community Path) that loops the entire park. It’s wide, well-maintained, and walkable in under an hour. Inside that loop, two interior trails cross the forest: the Interlaken Trail running east–west, and the Waterline Trail running north–south. Both are roughly 1 kilometre, both connect to side trails that take you past the lakes.

For runners and dog owners, the interior forest trails are off-leash from dawn to 10 a.m. daily (except the perimeter pathway and the trails leading to Mundy Lake, where dogs are not permitted to protect waterfowl and turtle habitat). There’s also a separate fenced off-leash dog park on the west side of Mariner Way, with sectioned-off areas for large and small dogs.

Mundy Lake and Lost Lake

The two lakes inside Mundy Park serve very different roles. Mundy Lake is the bigger, more visible one — accessible via the Perimeter Pathway and surrounded by viewing benches and interpretive signage. Lost Lake, in the southern interior of the park, is quieter and more remote. It’s also home to a critical habitat feature most people don’t know about: a sand nesting beach at the south end was installed in partnership with the Coastal Painted Turtle Project to support endangered Western Painted Turtles. The nesting beach itself is closed to public access — but if you walk the loop in early summer, you’ll see the wildlife signage and the protected sightlines.

Other amenities

Beyond the trails and the lakes, the west side of Mundy Park holds the heaviest concentration of recreation infrastructure in Coquitlam:

• Lit sports fields (soccer, baseball/softball with 90-foot and 65/60-foot diamonds)
• A lacrosse box (also doubles as four pickleball courts in summer)
• A nine-hole disc golf course
• The Mundy Park Field House with two multipurpose rooms (room A and room B) used for community programming
• Sheltered picnic areas (rentable April–September)
• A playground
• A little library
• The off-leash dog area mentioned above

It’s the kind of park profile you find in much larger cities — and in Coquitlam it’s a 5–10 minute drive from most of the central residential pockets.

The neighbourhoods that ring Mundy Park

This is where the pool reopening genuinely matters for anyone thinking about where to buy or rent in Coquitlam. Mundy Park isn’t anchored to one neighbourhood — it touches a half-dozen distinct residential pockets, each with its own price point and personality. Here’s the lay of the land:

Central Coquitlam — the closest residential pocket

If you want to walk to the new pool, you live in Central Coquitlam, in the streets immediately north of Como Lake Avenue and west of Mariner Way. The housing stock is predominantly older detached homes — many built in the 1960s and 1970s, sitting on 7,000–10,000 square foot lots. Renovations are common; tear-down rebuilds happen but aren’t the default. Detached benchmark prices in Central Coquitlam in April 2026 are running around $1.64M, with average days on market near 31 days. It’s the most accessible detached entry point in Coquitlam’s higher-amenity neighbourhoods.

Austin Heights — Coquitlam’s walkable village

Austin Heights is the historical commercial spine of Coquitlam — businesses line Austin Avenue and Ridgeway Avenue, you can walk to coffee, groceries, restaurants, and the King Albert Avenue retail strip without getting in a car. It’s also currently home to active redevelopment: The Heights on Austin (1045 Austin Avenue, a 25-storey Beedie tower) is one of several towers transforming the skyline. For buyers, Austin Heights offers a rare combination — established detached on tree-lined streets within a few blocks of a walkable village core, with new condo stock available for downsizers who don’t want to leave the neighbourhood.

Mundy/Cape Horn and Coquitlam East — value play

Cape Horn, Ranch Park, Meadow Brook, and the broader Coquitlam East area sit on the east side of Mundy Park, sloping down toward Highway 1 and the Fraser River. These are family-oriented neighbourhoods with detached homes as the dominant housing type, and they consistently price below the Westwood/Burke Mountain detached benchmarks while still offering large lots, school proximity, and park access. Ranch Park in particular has homes backing onto Pinnacle Ravine Creek’s greenbelt — a quietly underrated street-by-street draw.

What the new pool does for property values nearby

I want to be careful with this one, because the temptation in real estate writing is to claim that any new amenity drives a measurable home-price premium. The honest answer is more nuanced:

Major civic amenities — parks, libraries, recreation centres, pools — don’t usually show up as a clean line on a benchmark price chart in the first year or two. What they do show up as is days on market and resale velocity. Homes that are demonstrably close to a high-quality, well-used amenity tend to sell faster, generate more showings per listing, and resist price softness in slower markets. That effect is most visible in the 800-metre walking radius — about a 10-minute stroll.

For buyers, the practical takeaway is this: if you’re weighing two otherwise comparable Coquitlam homes and one of them puts you inside a 10-minute walk of Mundy Park and the pool, the lifestyle premium is real even if the listing price doesn’t reflect it explicitly. You’ll feel the difference every Saturday for the next ten years.

For sellers, the takeaway is sharper: list within the walking radius and you have a marketing story most homes in the city don’t have. The renewed pool, the 5.5-km trail loop, the dog park, the sports fields — these are concrete differentiators in listing copy, and they shorten days on market materially when the listing presentation actually leans into them.

Accessibility and Indigenous recognition — what the City got right

Two things about the new facility deserve specific recognition because they’re easy to miss on a first visit but represent real design intent.

Accessibility

The pool was designed in alignment with Rick Hansen Accessibility Standards. All three pools have zero-depth or transfer-edge entries so individuals using mobility devices can enter independently. There are five designated accessible parking stalls. Two large change/shower rooms include a universal layout, and one is equipped with a full adult-sized change bed and a ceiling-mounted transfer lift — that’s a genuine difference from most outdoor pools in the region. Automatic door openers on every washroom and change room, braille signage throughout, accessible counters at the pay station and concession, and accessible bleacher seating for swim meets round out the spec.

In 2026, the facility earned the Bill Woycik Outstanding Facility Award from the Recreation Facilities Association of BC (RFABC), citing its integration of accessibility, sustainability, and operational efficiency.

Indigenous cultural recognition

The City of Coquitlam — whose name derives from the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ word kʷikʷəƛ̓əm, meaning “Red Fish Up the River” — installed two cultural recognition pieces at the renewed pool, both created in partnership with the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm First Nation and designed by Coast Salish artist Rosalie Dipscu.

At the main entrance, The Circle of Life represents Family, Play, Children, Land, and Water with a Salmon at its centre. Inside the reception area, The Heron (smə́q́ʷaʔ) is an interactive installation made from yellow cedar — visitors can turn the wheel and watch the three faces of the heron rotate, marking a seasonal cycle of renewal. The three faces never appear upside down, regardless of how you turn the wheel. It’s the kind of detail you appreciate more the second or third time you see it.

The sustainability story — and why $34,000 a year matters

If you only read the construction-cost headline ($32M), you miss the operating-cost story underneath. The renewed facility replaced the original natural-gas boiler plant with a hybrid heat pump / boiler system, plus LED lighting throughout and a pool cover that retains heat overnight. The City projects an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from facility operations, and roughly $34,000 in annual operating savings.

That’s not a number that wins headlines, but compounded across a 40–50 year design life, that’s $1.4M–$1.7M in operating savings that won’t fall on Coquitlam taxpayers. The facility is built to last.

How I help families thinking about Mundy Park neighbourhoods

If you’re reading this because you’re thinking about buying near Mundy Park — or selling a home you already own near it — here’s how I work the area specifically:

What to do this opening weekend

If you’ve never been to the renewed facility, the opening weekend (May 30–31, 2026) is a fair sampler. My honest advice:

• Go early on Saturday morning (11 a.m. opening) for the leisure pool with kids. The crowd builds quickly between 1 and 4 p.m.
• Walk the Perimeter Trail loop first, then end your loop at the pool for an afternoon swim. About 90 minutes if you walk the full 5.5 km without rushing.
• Bring your own padlock. The City provides lockers but you’ll need a lock — many people forget on opening day.
• Avoid the swim-meet weekends (July 17–19 and July 31–August 2). The pool closes to public swim for those Sharks club events.
• For older swimmers, register for the 6:30–7:30 a.m. lane swim early in the week — it’s the most peaceful hour of the day at this facility.

Frequently asked questions