WESTLOCK – The $381,000 Heritage Building renovation project is ahead of schedule, with a late-May, early-June completion date now anticipated.
Town of Westlock community services director Gerry Murphy told councillors at their April 12 meeting that the project, which started the last week of February, is moving along faster than anticipated and tracking close to a month ahead of its original completion date. Work includes $125,000 for renovation of the building’s washrooms, as well as $256,351 worth of renos to become the new home of Westlock Family and Community Support Services.
“The completion date is June 25 as per the contract, but they are ahead of schedule and I anticipate that we might be in there by the end of May … in six to eight weeks,” said Murphy. “That building is really, I think, going to become a social and cultural hub of the community and I’m really looking forward to the end result.”
In the past the Heritage Building was part of Westlock Elementary School — in the 1970s it was home to Grade 3-4 students and was one of three separate wings. In the 1980s, WES moved to its current location in Eastglen — that building, constructed in 1970, had been the junior high — while the other two elementary school buildings near the Heritage Building were eventually razed. The junior high, in turn, then became part of what’s now R.F. Staples School.
Currently the building is home to the Westlock Municipal Library, Westlock Literacy & Learning Centre and town council chambers, which relocated there from the main town building in 2017.
Coun. John Shoemaker said he’s not only looking forward to the completion of the project, but being able to return to council chambers as they’ve been forced to meet via Zoom since the province upped its COVID-19 restrictions in late 2020.
“We have made strides to make council chambers COVID friendly, if you will. But it’s not large enough to accommodate a bunch of public if they wanted to attend,” said CAO Simone Wiley in a follow-up interview. “The chamber’s desks, with the spacing and the partitions, it’s more suitable to an in-person meeting and we hope that when the renovations are done in June council will be able to get back in there, COVID willing.”
As for when the town office will reopen to the public, Wiley said the work-from-home order isn’t slated to be lifted until Step 4 of the province’s reopening strategy, although that may change depending on a host of factors.
“It could be a ways off. But our COVID recovery taskforce has discussions as updates and provincial things change and they could decide that we need to be open if things are trending in the right direction and cases are going down,” she added.
