Morinville's town hall is looking mighty barren this week as crews set to work gutting it.
The library's shelves are gone, as are the tables, desks and chairs upstairs. One of the few pieces of furniture left is the council chamber table, notes Rick Moser, as he stands in the empty council chamber, and that'll be gone soon too.
Moser is a project manager with St. Albert's Synergy Projects and the person in charge of renovations to St. Germain Plaza, home to Morinville's town hall and library. Work on the $2.5-million project started this Monday as crews bashed drywall and pried out doorframes with hammers and crowbars.
Crews plan to knock down all the interior walls of the building in preparation for its makeover, Moser says, the details of which will be finalized this week by council. "The only things that will be remaining in the building are the server room and the two vaults."
His team plans to run the renovation as a "soft LEED" project, he says, referring to the environmental building standard, by recycling construction material where possible, sorting their trash, and reusing doors and frames. "We'll salvage as much as we can."
Plans take shape
The renovations have been in the works for about three years, says Claude Valcourt, the town's director of public works.
"What started the whole thing was the [heat and ventilation] system that was failing," he says — it's about 25 years old and tends to freeze or bake parts of the building. The town also realized it needed a new emergency command post and an expanded library.
No one's sure what the new building will look like, as the town's staff had yet to finish the plans for the renovations. But there are a few changes that will definitely happen, Valcourt says.
First, he says, the building will have one front door instead of the three it has now, one that will lead into an open lobby that juts out to the support pillars out front. It should have a Chapters-like feel, he says, with lots of glass, kiosks and coffee-drinking areas.
The library will now take up the entire ground floor of the building, growing to about 613 sq. m. from its current 390.
While town administration will still use the two ground-floor vaults to store files, its staff and offices will go upstairs. Council chambers will move to the north side of the building from the south and will gain a larger public gallery. The elevator will be upgraded and a new general information desk will be dropped in front of it to greet visitors to the second floor.
Expect to see up to 50 workers on site during the peak of construction, Moser says, which should hopefully wrap up by Dec. 31. "It's a very tight schedule," he says, and it'll be a challenge to get all the work done on time.
This will involve some trenching and hammering, he says, but nothing that will impact residents. "You won't even know we're here."
Library gets wet
About 28 library and town staff members shuffled out of St. Germain Plaza earlier this month and set up shop in the basement of the Parish Hall.
One of them was library manager Isabelle Cramp. It's a tight squeeze, she says, and her staff members have room for just four desks and two shelves. "It's cozy."
It was also pretty damp for a few hours last Friday. Heavy rains created a small lake by the hall's back door, Cramp says, and a creeping puddle in the basement.
The water had spread through about two-thirds of the basement before someone noticed, Cramp says. "Everybody grabbed some mops and started mopping," she says, including volunteers from the parish hall committee and a fireman.
Valcourt says a clogged drain on the west side of the building caused water to seep into the basement. "It found the path of least resistance and came through the bottom of the wall."
Public works crews cleared the clog, drained the lake, and broke out the shop vacs. Nothing was damaged and they've taken steps to guard against future floods.
