City to renovate old fair building
The City of Sherbrooke is seeking government help to fully convert one of the only remaining vestiges of its fair grounds into a multipurpose sports facility. At the moment about 66 per cent of the Expo-sherbrooke building, located in the Sylvie Daigle Park in Fleurimont, is used by the Shergym gymnastic club, while the rest is used as storage by the municipal government.
“The executive committee asked us to examine two possible scenarios; renovation or the construction of a new building,” explained Jean Lussier, Division Chief for buildings with the city, following a presentation of the plan for the city council on Monday evening. “The scenario we’ve recommended is that of renovation; the objective was to reuse that building.”
According to Lussier, the building is not in terrible shape but just poorly organized for its intended purpose. Whereas the project team estimates that demolishing and building new would cost in the range of $10.7 million, the plan to renovate and restructure would only require $6.2 million.
“The cost of work to be done in the short term represents about ten per cent of the value of the building,” the division chief said, explaining that while none of the repairs to be done are urgently needed, they are all things that would need to be done within the next five years. By doing the full renovation, he continued, the needs of potential rental organization can be better met and the lifetime of the building can be extended as much as 40 years.
“We know that it can serve the needs of the organizations currently using the building as well as others who might in the future,” said Ingrid Dubuc, division
The post yesterday morning on the Sunnyside Elementary School (SES) Facebook page reminded students to layer up and slip into some warm socks to prepare for a day of fun-filled activities to come.
Students spent the day alternating between skating and hockey at the Pat Burns Arena, snowshoeing, sliding and broomball in the playground and forest behind the school, and a collective art project and mellow movie time with hot chocolate in the afternoon.
See more pictures and information about SES carnival day on page 5.
chief for sports and events who presented the project along with Lussier. Dubuc explained that the project was inspired by a grant opportunity from the Ministry of Education for sports infrastructure, and that reorganizing the building for use by more local sports programs would help it fit the profile of its current surroundings and make the Sylvie Daigle Park a sports hub for the city.
“With the other installations already in place nearby we’re talking about an outdoor artificial field, an indoor artificial field, two arenas, two outdoor soccer fields, a baseball field and a training field,” Dubuc said. “It is a sports park.”
Dubuc said that the team has been working on finding out about the needs of the groups using the building for a year and a half in preparation for the project proposal and presented the concept to them just recently.
“They are very satisfied,” she said, noting that the groups offered only minor adjustments in terms of feedback.
Although the project received favourable response at the council level, Lussier pointed out that the decision about when work will begin is dependent upon whether or not the project receives the grant that is being sought. He estimated that the project represents a minimum of a year of work and said it was not likely to start before 2020.