THE BENDIGO Aquatic Centre swimming club rooms could soon be demolished to open up views of the historic Municipal Baths.
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The City of Greater Bendigo has lodged a planning permit to demolish the 54-year-old building, which sits next to the Faith Leech Aquatic Centre in Barnard Street.
The building overlooks the last remaining slice of the Municipal Baths, a body of water that once stretched from Camp Hill Primary School towards the Queen Elizabeth Oval.
Most of the baths were replaced by concrete bottomed pools in 1958 and the remaining pond is now home to wildlife.
The council wants to demolish the building and remove its asbestos so that the baths can be viewed from Barnard Street.
The "parkland street frontage" would bring some of the character of nearby parkland to the area, according to a 2014 Rosalind Park master plan.
That plan also called for a public space around the baths, including boardwalks and barbecue facilities.
The council has been working on the redesign but it yet to make those plans public.
One of its goals was making the area less appealing to resident ibises, the council's parks and open space manager Paul Gangell said in September last year.
Neighbours had complained about the ibises' smell and noise at the baths, especially in summer. resident Elaine Clark said many had arrived around the time the council removed ibises from Lake Weeroona.
"The issue is the number of birds there is making it smelly and noisy. It's not appropriate in the middle of town," she said last September.
The demolition of the building would be the start of the "next exciting chapter" for the Bendigo Hawks Aquatic Swimming Club and for other residents, secretary Charron Trainor said.
Knocking down the clubhouse is part of a bigger plan that would effectively reopen the baths to people in Bendigo, even if they will likely never again be able to swim there, she said.
The club plans to move its gym into the Faith Leech Aquatic Centre, its summer base for training, if the building is knocked down, Ms Trainor said.
The Hawks' club has a long history at Barnard Street that dated back to February 12 1917 and included among its members Faith Leech, the city's only gold medalist.
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The 4 x 100m freestyle medalist trained at the "Muni" - as many people called the facility - until the concrete bottomed pool was opened.
"We still have life members who swam in the original baths and tell beautiful stories of Bendigo and its swimming history," Ms Trainor said.
"This is really the next step in that."
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