BATTLEFORD – Town of Battleford council has given the OK to make improvements to the main floor of Town Hall.
Council gave its approval to administration's recommendation to award the Town Hall Office Renovation Request for Proposal project to CandorBuild Construction Corporation for the total amount of $96,240 at its meeting on March 17.
Council voted 4:2 in favour of getting this work done.
During the town's 2025 budget approval, council allocated $100,000 for this project. A Hazardous Material Assessment will be conducted at a cost of $3,760, leaving an available project budget of $96,240.
The work will involve painting, flooring replacement, workstation reconfiguration, accessibility upgrades, and security enhancements, according to CAO Todd Francis' report.
CandorBuild Construction Corporation was the sole bidder for the project.
The company "demonstrates significant expertise in office renovations, ensuring minimal disruption to municipal operations while meeting accessibility and usability standards," said the report.
Coun. Judy Pruden said she didn't support the ask to spend $100,000 for the renovation project at this time.
She said a couple of years ago council budgeted to make improvements to the basement that were needed, but it wasn't done.
Mayor Ames Leslie said the investment to the main floor is much needed.
"There will be some realignment of the work stations to give it a bit more flowability and a little bit more egress, which needs that safety piece, so people can get in and out of that work area," Leslie said after the meeting. "It will revamp the reception area. Technically today, we're not compliant to people with special needs, with our counter. So, this will add an addition of being compliant to that."
He also noted that the carpeting on the floors is worn and needs to be changed.
"They out-date me for the 13 years that I've been here," he said. "So there is a lot of wear and tear of the flooring that is going to be replaced."
Workers will also renovate the lunch room to make it more up-to-date.
"It's not very user friendly," Leslie said. "There is going to be a little bit of investment to make the space for our employees to get away from their desks to go and have lunch, or have coffee together and not be stuck in their work [station]. That will also address some of our health environment of our employees to make things better."
There will be no structural changes to the building with the renovations, just making the flow of the reception areas and the work stations better and "a little more viable for our employees and for the residents as they come in to conduct their business," Leslie said.
No plans are in place at the current time but council will also need to work with administration to see how to improve the basement and later the upper level of the building in the future.
For the basement, the next priority, Leslie noted there are some permanent structure beams down there that can't be moved due to the age of the building, so it will take some creativity to maximize that space.
"One thing that is down there is storage," he said. "Part of the compliance and the legislation in the municipal world is we have to keep documents for a lot of years. But there is some evolution coming that that can be stored on the Cloud [on the Internet]. As we progress through that we need less room to store boxes of information and paperwork, so we'll be able to look at that to expand. Hopefully, in the 2026 budget there can be something in there for other engineering or even to start to invest to make that basement a usable space."
For the upper level, that at one time was the site of an opera house, Leslie noted since the stairwell is in the middle of the town hall, if the upper level is to be used by members of the public in the future, an elevator would need to be created or an external staircase developed.
"There is a pretty large investment to convert a building like this to have something like that," he said.
The mayor mentioned that new windows have previously been installed on the upper level and some of the panelling has been improved.
"When council gave direction at that Strategic Plan there was no Dekker Centre at that time," he said. "Now that the Dekker Centre came in-line we've had to convert to different things like: Can we make it into office space, can we make it into a multi-purpose facility up there? Council will consider different options, and recognize the historical value of it, but we just need to invest the money where it can be. Because it's not going to be cheap, it's going to be $8 million to $15 million depending on how it gets done."
