Meridian Community Centre in Pelham on schedule
Though construction isn’t quite complete, Pelham’s Meridian Community Centre is filling up fast as groups book time in the new $36 million facility, said Bill Gibson, chair the town’s oversight committee.
“It should be substantially complete by June 1, with just a few nuts and bolts left. It will essentially be ready for occupancy and I’m very confident it will be within budget,” Gibson said, as he led The Tribune on a tour.
Mayor Dave Augustyn said the town will get keys to the facility in June and staff will familiarize themselves and get used to the systems inside, and retest various equipment.
“User groups will be moving in over the summer,” the mayor said.
Augustyn said he was delighted with the progress and that the facility would be on time and on budget.
He said a lacrosse tournament will be the first event held inside the community centre that borders Regional Road 20 and Rice Road.
Gibson said construction of the community centre — which features two gymnasiums, twin-pad hockey arena, a large community multi-purpose space, indoor walking track, and community meeting rooms — started two years ago.
“We had a very successful winter, there was no frost in the ground that first year and it let us get in the foundation and the structural steel up. If we would have had to do it this winter, we would have been way behind schedule,” Gibson said.
Once the building was enclosed in December 2017, it allowed the interior to be heated and work that required a climate-controlled environment to get underway, he said.
When Pelham went ahead with a new community centre, it decided to take a different approach to building it.
Gibson said it hired Ball Construction as a supplier to the town, and that Ball had a fixed fee and knew that it had to stay within the budget.
“Ball did most of the tendering for us and it handle site supervision and reported to our oversight committee. By doing it this way the town was able to have better control over the tender prices.”
He said a quite a few local subcontractors and tradespeople from Pelham have been involved
in the construction.
“I’m trying to gather how many person hours have gone into construction and how many people have been employed here for the last council meeting in May.”
While the town tried a new process for building the 12,870square-metre, two-storey multipurpose
facility, Gibson said there was some controversy early on.
The community centre did not have a second ice pad attached to it at the start of the process.
That came about after discussions with user groups and council.
With some reworking of the plans and fine-tuning here and there, Gibson said an additional 836-square metres, which included the extra ice pad and an
additional basketball court, was added on.
“The repricing came back less than double what it would have cost for two arenas.”
Gibson also said the facility had to meet more strict fire, building and other safety codes, and is hurricane and earthquake proof.
Its larger chiller plant also had to meet certain codes when installed, he added.
As he led the tour around the facility, Gibson pointed out various community meeting rooms that have views over both arenas and an area that looks down on the two basketball courts.
He said plans are underway for a large public square at the north entrance of the building that can be utilized for various events.