With cool fall winds whipping around City Hall Tuesday night, Elliot Lake CAO Daniel Gagnon urged City Council members meeting inside to make a decision on the future of the city's ruined Civic Centre. They heeded his advice.
The fall weather put extra emphasis on the need to decide if a temporary protective topping should be spread over the roof of Lester B. Pearson Civic Centre on Highway 108. The old building has been open to the elements ever since a section of the roof was removed in the warm weather months for assessment and so construction cranes could have access to items which could be salvaged for future use.
That only added to the original problem created when severe ice and snowload led to a collapsed roof over the theatre auditorium in the building last February.
On the issue of salvaging whatever can be salvaged from Pearson Civic Centre, Gagnon said, "We have talked about salvage from a cost area and also from the community, you know, historical perspective. At some point it becomes a fact that some items are easy to pluck off before you get in too deep."
"There's a point where the cost of that thing is not worth the effort. But we can work that out. That's why we wanted to get detailed tenders or detailed quotes before we pulled the trigger," Gagnon concluded.
Most local politicians noted they received plenty of community feedback favouring demolition, and then a full rebuild. That is also the position taken by a number of arts and other organizations including the Nuclear and Mining Museum Advisory Board. Thus, Council acquiesced and voted in favour.
Gagnon said regardless of whether Council had decided to tear down and start over at the present site, or not, and fix up the old building, or rebuild somewhere else, the pending insurance settlement from last February's roof collapse could have been applied to any decision Council made.
In turn, with the decision to re-build in hand, money will be leveraged from other sources, so the insurance settlement could be considered as 50 cent dollars for funding the project.
Gagnon said Fednor and other federal funding agencies will be called upon to match whatever funds are brokered by the City's insurance consultant Ellis Don, and City staff representatives, as they continue negotiations on the way to nailing down a final figure.
The starting point for the insurance settlement, said the CAO, is about $3.7 million. He said whatever higher figure is achieved would basically be matched by contributions from the external agencies. The Pearson Centre was insured for $9 million. The cost for a re-build, said Gagnon, would likely range from $8 million to $12 million.
Ellis Don estimates the cost of repairing the Civic Centre, should that decision had been made, would have been around $3.7 million, not including demolition costs.
Also Tuesday night, the expected motion by Councillor Ed Pearce to amend a procedural bylaw so that Councillors would be prohibited from leaving meetings without permission and thus, thwarting votes, was deferred. It's now set to be dealt with at the next Elliot Lake City Council regular meeting on October 28.