St. Marys awards contract for Friendship Centre refresh and accessibility improvements

By Galen Simmons

Visitors and staff at the Friendship Centre can expect a more accessible, functional and modern space after St. Marys council awarded the contract for a long-planned interior refresh of the facility.

At its June 23 regular meeting, council awarded the project to Trigon Construction Management for $115,700.70 and approved additional funding from the town’s general capital reserve to cover the project cost.

“This project is in regards to doing a lot of accessibility and staffing-ergonomics upgrades to the Friendship Centre,” St. Marys recreation operations manager Doug LaPointe told council. “The office area where all the program and support staff work has kind of shrunk in relation to how many staff we have, so the number of staff have outgrown the area.

“We’re looking to update that with some redesign and also the accessibility upgrades; the entranceway needs to be updated, and we know that there are some traffic-flow problems. We’d like to open up the foyer area a little bit more to allow for people to flow through the centre a little bit better. And also, we felt it was a good time to update the paint scheme of the centre.”

Located inside the Pyramid Recreation Centre, the Friendship Centre has served as a hub for seniors’ programming and services for the past 20 years.

The project is intended to improve both the experience of visitors and the working environment for staff as demand for programming at the centre continues to grow.

Among the planned upgrades is a redesign of the entrance area to create a larger, more open foyer that can better accommodate visitors, including those using mobility scooters, walkers and other accessibility devices. The work will also include replacing the existing entrance door with an automatic sliding door to further improve accessibility.

Behind the scenes, office spaces will be reconfigured to improve staff ergonomics and provide additional workstations to support the growing number of employees delivering senior services.

The project will also include a new reception area and welcome desk, along with a complete repainting of the public and office spaces. The refreshed colour palette will replace the centre’s original early-2000s finishes with lighter, more contemporary colours intended to brighten the facility and complement updated décor and signage.

“I’ve received a lot of positive comment about this project and I think it’s absolutely worth doing. I’ll be happy to see what it looks like when it’s done,” deputy mayor Brogan Aylward said before council voted to award the tender.

Council approved transferring an additional $9,192.06 from the general capital reserve to cover the difference between the approved capital budget and the successful tender price.

An additional $13,861 was also approved from the reserve after donations originally expected to fund portions of the project fell short of earlier estimates. The project had originally anticipated donations covering the ergonomic upgrades and painting components, but available donations totalled less than expected.

Six prequalified contractors submitted bids for the project following a competitive procurement process. After reviewing the submissions, staff recommended awarding the contract to Trigon Construction Management as the proposal offering the best overall value to the municipality.