A planning committee is looking at the possibility of replacing the current Water Valley Community Hall with a new one, say officials.
If funds can be raised for that project, Harold Baxandall, chair of the five-year planning committee, says construction would likely start in the spring of 2016.
However, he stresses no plan has been approved by council. His committee has simply studied the matter and came up with some options.
“We've looked at a 5,000-square-foot hall and about an 8,000-square-foot hall,” Baxandall says.
Assuming the new hall would be built on existing land – slab-on-grade construction -- Baxandall says the committee estimates the 5,000-square-foot hall would cost about $900,000 to build, while the 8,000-square-foot hall would cost about $1.2 million to construct.
Over the next six months or so, the committee plans to discuss the idea with the community to gauge support for the project. If the community supports construction of a new hall, the committee wants to know what size of hall residents would like built and where they would like it to be located.
Baxandall says in recent years, the existing hall in Water Valley has suffered major water damage.
“We're in a bit of a sticky situation because the hall is starting to deteriorate,” he says. “We never had black mould in the basement before. Now we have. We never had the basement being really wet. Now we have. The support posts that are underneath the structure are wet all the time.”
An engineer examined the structure last spring and presented a report on the matter.
“We looked at options of raising it and all that kind of stuff and it's just cost-prohibitive,” he says, although he did not specify what those cost estimates were.
During the past few years, funds were raised for improvements to the existing hall. He says they'll be used as a “starting point” in the fundraising campaign for a new building.
He's not sure how long it would take to build a new hall because it would have to be done with volunteer labour.
The committee looked at maybe not replacing the hall at all – utilizing other halls instead, but it was decided that wasn't a good option, he said.
“A lot of the local halls are fairly small; we're one of the larger ones,” he says. “There is one at Dogpound that's a decent size, but it's a ways away. And the other thing is the hall is the focal point of the community and helps us keep the Water Valley community kind of intact.”
In fact, Baxandall says, building a new hall might bring Water Valley residents closer together as a community.
“That's one of the things that we're hoping to do,” he said.
Should a new hall be built, one key priority would be to make sure it “respects” founders and supporters of the current hall, he said.
“There are plaques that are hung in our hall that are from donations when we did our last upgrade to the hall. They're brands on plaques and a lot of the different local families have their names up on these plaques,” he said.
A new hall would be designed to reflect “the western style that we're known for in Water Valley,” he said.
