About six years ago, the community also built a new fire hall, as the fire department had outgrown their original hall, which was attached to the municipal office. That move freed up some space, which is part what triggered the municipal office renovation. The old fire hall was at ground level – it had to be so the trucks could drive in and out – while the old offices were upstairs, which presented accessibility challenges. With the old fire hall now empty, the opportunity arose to retrofit that space and move the main offices down there so visitors with strollers and scooters could just walk right in. There were other motivating factors as well. For example, the existing building was aging and required repairs to the roof and stairs – renovating the office also gave the municipality the opportunity to rectify those issues. It also gave them the opportunity to add more office space and make the building more functional. To that end, the renovation involved adding a new board room, a new staff room, and a significant upgrade to the council chambers, which used to be too small to accommodate more than a few members of the public. To design the new office space, Killarney turned to Michael Cox, an architect out of Brandon, whose vision revolved around modernizing the building while still maintaining the original character and history. As part of that vision, they ended up preserving the doors from the original council chamber room and installing them in the new council chamber room. To deliver the space, the municipality was able to select Westman Specialty Contracting, a locallybased company – “which is always nice,” Meghan says, “because we always like to keep the money THE CONSTRUCTION SOURCE CANADA
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