Bangor £38m leisure centre still shut after storm winds ripped roof off for second time in four years - contractors on site today to assess repair job

Storm Eowyn’s 90mph winds badly damaged the building on Friday, and over the weekend officials stated the huge facility would still be shut today (Monday).

Late in 2021, Storm Arwen also tore off a substantial section of the roof. Back then, the entire centre was closed for the week after winds hit, and to the chagrin of locals a substantial amount of it remained sealed off for a considerable period until repairs could be carried out.

The new damage hit a different section of the roof to the parts ripped off in 2021.

Centre officials said building contractors would be on site today working out the extent of the repair job.

But they warned that sections of the centre may not reopen for some time.

A statement released by the centre said heavy rain on Sunday “hampered our recovery process”.

“Bangor Aurora will remain closed [on Monday],” the centre added.

“Contractors will be attending the site to survey the damage and hopefully provide some positive news on the next steps.

"We can then communicate directly with our members about when and which parts of site we plan to open back up.”

In the meantime, stated officials, Bangor Aurora members can access two other council-owned facilities in the North Down area – though neither are up to the size and standard of the £38m leisure centre.

One is Bangor Sportsplex, an ageing site concentrating on outdoor pitches and running tracks that is widely agreed to be in serious need of an upgrade.

The other is Queen’s Leisure Complex in Holywood, roughly an 18-mile round trip from Bangor and lacking swimming facilities.

Aurora has suffered a series of setbacks and problems from the very beginning.

Built by the local council, it boasts a huge swimming pool that was supposed to be used to train athletes in advance of the 2012 London Olympics.

The 50-metre pool was described as a "flagship project" of Sport Northern Ireland’s Elite Facilities Programme, which was aimed at creating Olympic-standard facilities as a legacy of the 2012 games.

But after hitting construction delays, Aurora wasn’t ready until the year after the Olympics happened.

Over the past few years, the pool hit further problems connected with a moveable floor designed to separate it into different lengths.

Mechanical problems wedged the pool at a size that was far too small to train top-level competitive swimmers.

Attempted short-term fixes only worked for brief periods.

Athletes had been complaining about the pool since 2022, with Swim Ireland’s head coach at one point stating that the huge facility couldn’t be relied upon to train Northern Ireland’s hopefuls ahead of last year’s Olympics.

Towards the end of 2024, the pool shut down for around a month for repairs to at last be carried out – but just weeks later, Storm Eowyn hit.

Although owned by the local council, management of Bangor Aurora, as well as Bangor Sportsplex and Queen’s Leisure Complex in Holywood, is contracted out to private sector operator Serco.