In the near future, residents will be able to walk into the brand new Town Hall.
Progress on the new Drumheller Town Hall, in the old Civic Centre, is moving along. If all continues to go well, the renovations should be finished in the next several months.
“We’re still looking at an opening at the end of April to the first part of June,” said Mayor Terry Yemen.
Most of the building has been completed.
“We’re coming along pretty much on track. Most of the interior walls are in, the plumbing is done, and there’s only a little more work to be done on the heating,” said Allan Kendrick, Director of Infrastructure Services for the Town of Drumheller. “It looks like we’ll be really close to finishing the project on time.”
Demolition of the interior of the Civic Centre began last fall and construction soon after.
“It’s basically a retrofit. We had all the outside walls in place and we did some demolition on the inside, with staff from the Town and help from the Penitentiary,” said Kendrick. “The new interior is fairly straightforward office style. It’ll be a nice presentation when someone walks into the building.”
The move of Town Hall to the Civic Centre was confirmed early in 2012. The desire was to have the municipal heart of Drumheller modernized. Given the age of the current Town Hall, it was felt renovating it was not practical and would have taken considerable work to bring the building up to current building codes.
The cost of the renovation is roughly $2 million. Of that, $1.5 million was covered by a provincial grant.
“I really like the idea of having a handicap accessible Town Hall and one that’s downtown. We’re always looking for opportunities to revitalize downtown and this might help,” said Yemen.