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Renovations coming to Town Hall basement

Sep 7, 2016 | 7:35 PM

A change and a new look is coming to the Battleford Town Hall basement.

Town chief administrator John Enns-Wind said crews will gut the basement for a closer look at its structure.

“We’ve got a charming old, 104 year-old building that’s showing her age and needs a little bit of tender loving care,” he said. “We want to make sure that we can make the right investments at the right time for this.”

Enns-Wind said the stripping of the basement will answer questions about the strengths and weaknesses of the building.

“An architect will be inspecting it as well as a building inspector and then what we can do is decide how we want to renovate. If there’s any structural upgrades that need to occur, we can factor that in,” he said.

The renovation plans also include improving the security and energy efficiency of the space.

In addition to eventually fixing up the basement, the renovations will also assist in making the plans for future work on the building.

“There are aspirations to do the Opera House; the main floor needs some upgrades and some renovations,” Enns-Wind said. “Before we start on any of that, we really need to assess the condition of the whole facility so that we can properly understand what we need to do to make sure that it continues for another 104 years.”

The contract to tear everything down and do initial refurbishing of the insulation and drywall costs $6,000 and initial work is expected to take approximately a month.

 

Matt Kelly is battlefordsNOW’s town municipal affairs and community reporter. He can be reached at mkelly@jpbg.ca or tweet him @mattjkelly2.