Opinion: Nostalgia about the Tropicana isn’t a business plan

by Dan Heley

There’s a lovely, nostalgic impulse behind the calls to “bring the pool back” at the Tropicana. For many people the site is childhood summers, the thrill of a water slide and a town at its seaside best. But nostalgia isn’t a business plan — and the practical, financial and strategic case for reinstating a working pool at the Tropicana simply doesn’t stack up against the realities on the ground.

North Somerset Council and its partners have already secured targeted funding to transform the Tropicana into a year-round arts and events venue: the council has said the Tropicana will receive a significant portion of the Levelling Up award and related project investment earmarked for cultural and events use, not for recreating an outdoor lido.

On top of that, the council has reported an additional £2.7m of cultural funding for improvements to the Tropicana — again for arts, events and refurbishment — bringing committed funding toward the venue-transformation programme rather than to a swimming-pool reinstatement.

Put bluntly; significant public money is already assigned to remaking the Tropicana as a performance and events asset. Asking the council, or the taxpayer, to switch course and fund a technically complex pool rebuild would either cannibalise that investment or require fresh, substantial capital that isn’t currently pledged.

Historically, Tropicana redevelopment proposals that included an indoor or substantial leisure complex ran into very large headline figures — previous commercial schemes in the 2000s talked in the tens of millions. That gives a useful reminder that a serious, year-round pool option is a major capital project, not a low-cost project.

The Tropicana sits on a tidal, exposed seafront with one of the highest tidal ranges in Britain. Any pool structure here has to contend with salt, spray, possible coastal erosion, storm damage and stricter building resilience standards — all of which push up both capital and maintenance costs. Modern building regulations and climate-resilience requirements add complexity and expense that didn’t exist when the original pool was built in 1937. That means risk of unexpected bills during construction and a higher long-term maintenance burden.

Outdoor pools are inherently seasonal in the UK climate. Even if the Tropicana were rebuilt as an indoor complex, the local market for regular swimming (versus one-off events, concerts and cultural programming) is limited — Weston already has leisure provisions elsewhere, and a pool that can’t pay for itself will either sit empty for months or require council subsidy. Meanwhile, the current plans to turn the Tropicana into a flexible, higher-capacity events venue (capacity figures and operator procurement are already being discussed by the council) promise year-round footfall, jobs and a clearer income stream.

The council’s recent planning and procurement activity has explicitly been about securing an operator and transforming the venue into a multi-use cultural asset, which is the strategy currently being funded.

Recreating the Tropicana as a working swimming pool would be emotionally satisfying to many but economically and technically fraught. The council has already channelled Levelling Up and cultural funding toward an entertainment and cultural transformation for the site; reinstating a pool would demand tens of millions more in capital, saddle the town with ongoing subsidy risk, and defeat the current, funded strategy to secure a sustainable, year-round venue. That’s why — painful as it might be for some to hear; the most realistic, responsible choice for Weston-super-Mare is to back the Tropicana’s revival as a cultural and events hub.