The Shellharbour Workers' Club plans for a new leisure centre could have dashed any hopes Shellharbour residents had of a council-owned facility similar to ones in Kiama and Wollongong.
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Shellharbour Mayor Marianne Saliba said it would be "foolish" of the council to consider building a new leisure centre if private enterprise in Shellharbour was doing the same thing.
"We have a working party which is reviewing our swimming pools at the moment and looking at what we will need to provide into the future," Cr Saliba said.
"We've got beautiful beaches here and a lake in Shellharbour that perhaps we will need to utilise better."
The first stage of the Shellharbour Workers' Club's $64 million master plan includes a $7 million leisure centre development, which is to be a joint venture with McKeon's Swim School.
Plans for the development will be lodged with council in coming weeks, with hopes the facility will be operating in March, 2016.
Back in 2009, former Shellharbour council administrator David Jesson "opened the door" for a new leisure centre to be established in Shellharbour when he made a commitment that money raised in the first year following the introduction of pool fees would be set aside to investigate whether the city's older pools should be maintained or a new leisure centre built.
At the time, Mr Jesson said the cold water pools would need significant capital investment, and there was an opportunity for the council to investigate whether a leisure centre - which could be "all things to all people" - was a more suitable option.
In August this year Shellharbour council's aquatics facility working party decided to engage a consultant to review the city's aquatic facilities and assess the future needs of the community, funded by money set aside by Mr Jesson.
Cr Kellie Marsh described the workers' club's plans as "visionary" but said the leisure centre proposal brought forward a bigger debate that the council needed to have sooner rather than later.
"I personally believe pools are a community service, like a library service," Cr Marsh said.
"This is a discussion we need to have as a council and with the broader community ... We have a lot of escape spending from our community going to the Kiama Leisure Centre."
