Neil Tucker, 76, said it was an ‘excellent facility’.
‘It’s one of those strange things where we have to think about the whole benefit, not just that it’s losing money,’ he said.
Having had a heart operation, he uses the health suite dedicated to people recovering from medical conditions. It enables people to get fit again, he said, as it ‘keeps them off the healthcare treadmill, and therefore saves money’.
He also said that Beau Sejour kept youngsters busy during the holidays.
‘Without such a facility, I wonder what those children and teenagers would be doing.’
The entertainment facilities, he said, were the only part of Beau Sejour not used to full capacity. He assumed that an effort had been made to make that more profitable, but it failed.
He suggested that the States should firm up a subsidy to Beau Sejour, as it was on the British Airways Heathrow route.
Mother of two Christina Chapple said the leisure centre appealed to a variety of users.
‘I can’t imagine not coming here, it’s so multi-faceted that even though I’m not sporty I can still come and use the area.
‘We find that when we come here for one thing we normally end up staying and discovering other things to do, like today we came to look around the shop and ended up having a snack at the cafe and then came to the outdoor play area.
‘As a mum I spend quite a lot of time here with the children, but as an adult I only really come to it for big events like plays and shows. It just shows how versatile the venue is for different things. It could do with a face lift but that’s it. I just don’t want it to get demolished and then turned into something private.’
Josh Upson, 22, was also against closure or demolition.
‘I think suggestions to knock it down and rebuild it are absurd,’ he said.
The indoor facilities have never struck him as dilapidated, nor does he trust that a rebuilding project would benefit the island.
‘Likely it would be undertaken by a non-Guernsey contractor. It would run over-budget and over-time.’
He compared a potential rebuilding to other projects such as those for the Princess Elizabeth Hospital and Les Ozouets, which have ‘run aground’.
‘How can we trust this won’t be the same?’
Other Beau Sejour users who spoke anonymously were broadly positive about the centre and sceptical that a full rebuild is needed, though most saw room for improvement.
One regular gym-goer, who visits four or five times a week, praised the £40 off-peak membership as great value and called the facilities a great community hub, but complained the gym was often too crowded.
A pensioner who swims three or four times a week agreed it could be modernised in places but felt it remained a good facility with much of it in decent condition, including the cafe after recent refurbishment.
A long-standing centre visitor described it as vital and argued that investing in islanders’ health now would save on healthcare later. She particularly highlighted the pool’s importance for children learning to swim and praised the theatre.
You need to be logged in to comment.