KAMSACK — The recent engineering report on the Crowstand Centre and Shop Easy building indicates significant concerns.
Kamsack Town Admin Hvidston said, “Simple way of saying it. Shop easy is a tear down. There's too much wrong with it and it's a tear down. Just health and safety with the pigeons in there and everything else. It’s just not great.
Crowstand Centre, there's quite a few things wrong with it. The study that we've received is about 160 pages. The bottom line is to bring it up to present day codes, it's going to cost an estimated 5.4 million dollars. That doesn't include asbestos abatement. That does not include hiring an engineer to do the drawings on it. We were pretty much told that the electrical has to be upgraded, the water system has to be upgraded, the furnace unit has to be upgraded, the roof has to be redone. It has to be re-landscaped outside because every spring the water is running into the building instead of running away from the building. The walls above the doors have all separated. We have to do so much: electrical, HVAC, all these different mechanical items, that means the walls have to be torn to the studs, which means the walls have to be redone. It is a very expensive process and in order for us to reopen the Crowstand, they're estimating a minimum of 5.4 million. It'll be a decision of the new council whether to reopen or not.” Mayor Brunt added, “It's extremely expensive for a building that was not revenue positive in any way, shape, or form. It did house a lot of different things, the library, the court, the vet clinic, and the college used to be in there among other things. Despite this it was never a revenue positive building. It always cost more than what was brought in.”
Hvidston noted that, “That's one of the items that I'm going to discuss with this new council is long term planning. We need to look at every building, we need to look at every road, we need to look at every aspect of the town and start pre-planning for stuff to break down. That's what happened here is there wasn't a lot of planning, there wasn’t a lot of money put back into the Crowstand Centre and eventually it fell apart. We can say that about every single piece of infrastructure in the town.
Mayor Brunt added, “A lot of communities are experiencing the same things. They're experiencing it with a lot of the infrastructure, the water lines, sewer lines, roads, pavement and whatnot. So drive down any street in town pretty much and there's spots that need new pavements. Infrastructure is something that really needs to be looked at and planned for.”
