Aligned Leisure, a subsidiary company of Richmond Football Club, won a joint five-year tender from Albury and Wodonga Councils to manage Wodonga WAVES, Albury and Lavington Swim Centres and Wodonga Sports and Leisure Centre.

Aligned Leisure chief executive Shane Dunne, visiting the Border on Wednesday, said it would be business as usual for patrons after the changeover.

“Not much will change initially and then we’ll work with the customers to look at new opportunities … down the track,” he said.

“We want to work with all the existing staff teams, we want to hear from them all; if we haven’t heard from them all already we encourage them to get in contact with us. We hope we can transition almost all of the staff over, we will be recruiting for any gaps that we do have.”

Mr Dunne said establishing a presence in Albury and Wodonga “makes sense” to Aligned Leisure and Richmond.

“It’s a really strong sport-loving, fitness community,” he said.

“It’s part of our academy zone, we’ve got a lot of people involved in this region already and now to have a presence on the ground each and every day through the leisure centre and these aquatic facilities, it just allows us to connect with our community better.”

Albury deputy mayor Amanda Cohn said the joint aquatics contract represented the first demonstration of the Two Cities, One Community model.

“It’s much more efficient for us to have one company run all the facilities and that’s not just about saving ratepayers’ money, it’s about offering a better service to the community,” she said.

A panel of Albury and Wodonga senior staff members assessed Aligned Leisure’s tender, which also proposed a range of additional sporting, health, training leadership and education initiatives.

“The application we received from Aligned Leisure was really fantastic in terms of ideas they had to promote health and well being and participation in the community,” Cr Cohn said.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing what they bring to our community.”