The Northwest Territories Legislative Assembly moved into its new building, designed to preserve as much of the original shoreline and vegetation as possible, on the north shore of the lake in 1993. By then, all recreational use of the lake itself had ended. Many residents were too leery of leeches, which thrived in the lake in the absence of fish preying on them, to enter the water. Instead, the lake became the focus of the  Frame Lake Trail, a partially paved path around the entire shoreline, which soon became popular for walking and jogging.
In 2007, a conservation report prepared for the city named Frame Lake its top priority and suggested enacting special nature-preservation zoning to protect it. During the following decade, residents began to rediscover Frame Lake. "As a city, weve largely disengaged from this little jewel in our midst", wrote Matthew Mallon in YK_Edge', a local weekly newspaper. Newer residents, he said, were incredulous at his recollections of swimming and sailing on the lake in his childhood. In 2013 another local resident organized a Canada Day cleanup and swim in the lake, saying concerns about arsenic and leeches in the water were exaggerated.
The Carleton study carried out under a grant from Tides Canada and the Royal Bank of Canada in 2015 established that the lake had declined more precipitously since 1970, and described how. It will continue to measure the degradation of the lake on an annual basis to form a basis for policy recommendations to revitalize the lake. Currently researchers believe that either dredging rotten sediments off the lake bottom or aeration would best restore the water quality of the lake's early years.