Community centre upgrades to begin in mid-January

By Rob Vogt
The Claresholm Community Centre main hall and meeting room will be closed from mid-January to mid-April for renovations.
The lodge room hall will be available for bookings as usual.
On Sept. 9, Claresholm town council awarded a contract for $405,000 plus GST to Nitro Construction of Lethbridge County for the upgrade project.
Carmelle Steel, of the Claresholm Community Centre board of directors, said the main hall men’s and women’s washrooms will be renovated.
Once renovations start, they have to be brought up to building code, meaning more stalls have to be added which will take more space. To accommodate the additional space taken by the washrooms, the lobby will be renovated as well.
“The big reason we did it was for accessibility,” Steel said. “That is the number one reason.”
She said planning dates back to before the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019.
An idea was floated to fix up the entrance of the community centre and apply for grants.
At around the same time, a community member said the bathrooms were hard to get into with his wheel chair.
Consequently, the community centre board started applying for grants, but initially had no success.
Then they applied for a Community Facility Enhancement Program grant and received one of $249,000.
The board had a contractor create a plan on which the quote for the work was based on.
However, when the project went to tender the price wasn’t even close.
The board then talked to the Community Facility Enhancement Program about what to do next.
They suggested the board keep the grant, ask for an extension to complete the project, and apply for another Community Facility Enhancement Program grant.
Once that was secured, the board met with Town of Claresholm staff, who took them through the tendering process.
That led to the contract being awarded Nitro Construction.
“The board is happy we are able to proceed with this,” Steel said.