From 5-6PM on May 30 there is an open house at the Council Chambers to see preliminary design concepts, to understand timing. Here is notice for this open house. You can drop in any time during the hour; there is no presentation in that hour.
Staff report for MOVE is on the Council agenda that evening. (Note: I have provided link to the agenda page; scroll down and you will find links to several PDF’s.) As I have expressed before I am very enthusiastic about this initiative for a number of reasons.
- opportunity for more community space (e.g. a gym)
- opportunity for better public access to Township Offices for either attending Council meetings, meeting with Staff to discuss personal projects, reading documents
- opportunity to fund the project in a fiscally responsible manner by selling current Township site for higher value purpose (e.g. mixed use)
- opportunity to practise what we preach about re-purposing old buildings and recycle.
As covered in the report we are on track to meet my interests with one exception as the wisdom of renovating the old school is very doubtful. As reviewed a renovate & build option appears to be a lower cost option of $405,000 (3.6%) vs full demolition & new build but the risk of “surprises” with the lower cost option is high. Very quickly the savings could disappear. In addition there are benefits with starting fresh e.g. the gym will be enlarged to be regulation size.
I hope you are able to come to the open house and provide comments. If you can’t come, I am interested to hear from you either on this blog or call me.
Retrofitting an old building to get it up to current specs can indeed have nasty surprises (toxic mould being one of them) and raise costs considerable=y.
Demolishing and building new to Leed standards would give the town the opportunity to really have a nice building reflecting our time in history. Would be good to recycling the old useable materials for Habitat for Humanity.
Hi Gloria, I do know that a lot of the building to be demolished will be recycled. I will pass on your specific suggestion of Habitat for Humanity….”reuse” is even better! And indeed, some level of LEED is being considered; more to come on that detail.