Rob Campbell checks out the interior of the Peachland Primary School building Friday. (Dave Preston photo)
by Dave Preston
The outside of the Peachland Primary School hides well the story going on behind its walls.
While most of the building’s exterior, save the windows and some cladding at the bottom, looks fresh and new, inside just a skeleton remains.
“The building has been completely stripped out, down to the original 104-year-old studs,” said Rob Campbell, who has been supervising restoration efforts.
The studs, which have sat inside the old school building’s walls for more than a century, are massive, solid timbers of dimensional lumber that really do measure two inches by six inches.
Much of the work to date in the building has been about removing the old and unusable and the worrisome.
“All of the lath and plaster that contained a little bit of asbestos has all been removed,” said Campbell. “The building has been completely cleaned.”
Inside, both interior and exterior walls have been taken down to bare studs. Electrical wires are exposed, many hanging from the original ceiling. Demolition is basically done; now its time to build.
“The building is safe to occupy now and we go to the next phase, which is the start of interior redevelopment,” said Campbell.
Several years ago, Peachland council set aside $200,000 to go toward fixing up the building. Campbell said about half that amount remains today. The district was awarded a $50,000 grant from the federal government to make the building more accessible and the provincial government kicked in a grant worth $400,000.
In total, Campbell has about $550,000 to fix up the school building, plus some expected donations from interested companies.
An architect toured the building Thursday and another is expected Friday. Before any work can begin, an architect must lay out a plan for the interior, including locations to run electrical, plumbing and heating runs.
A structural engineer will be brought in to determine if walls need to be beefed up to meet today’s code. Then it’s work plan and budget time.
“The district wants a work plan and as close a budget as I can get,” said Campbell.
Those documents will be reviewed by the Primary School Implementation Committee before being forward to Peachland council.
“We’re going to try and make this thing look as exactly as it did back in 1908,” said Campbell.
Architectural features inside will be saved as much as possible, but there will be some changes to the school building.
Plans call for the front two classrooms to be mostly used as a new Visitor Information Centre. There will be a small chamber of commerce office in the front and a new board room that can be used by community groups that will seat about 30 people.
The wall between the front classrooms will be cut open so the two rooms become one.
In the back, one classroom will be exclusively for the home of the new Peachland Youth Centre, to be run by the Boys and Girls Club. The other classroom will be turned into a multi-use facility for various community groups.
The back classrooms jut out from the structure with a large gap in the middle. That gap will be filled in, according to Campbell, so that additional washrooms and an office and kitchen for the youth centre can be built.
Campbell said he expects it will take about nine months to restore the interior and make it ready for occupancy. With that timeline, the chamber of commerce, the Visitor Information Centre and the Boys and Girls Club should be moving in sometime in the spring of 2013.
- Excited
- Informed
- Amused
- Bored
- Sad
- Angry
the plans required for the Primary building are not the same as for the curling club, the curling club required a complete set of drawings for all trades involved where as the primary building is already standing and is getting reno’d. Mr. Campbell is required to have a budget in place for the balance of work to be done as well as those who are contributing via donating their time
So lee4mayor with the information available and not needing any further input from the architect and structural engineer on the layout (bathrooms, sinks and showers and the plumbing runs) are you ready to provide a fixed cost bid? Or would you bid materials and labour as required?
Some people have huge cost overruns on their simple housing renovations — even people in the trades— when they don’t have a comprehensive plan and fixed bids.
yes i would be ready, as in most home renovations, the client asks for a quote and we explain that we can not see into their walls to look for any hidden problems, that is why we tend to do a “cost plus” job. But in the case of the Primary School building, It has been totally gutted, Mr. Campbell knows what is going on inside, the architect puts it all down on paper as directed by the owner (Peachland). so yes I would be willing to submit a price at this time.People get into trouble and overruns doing a house reno because they tend to pick the cheapest bid and the bids do not cover everything that can not be seen. Then the “extras” start piling up.
thanks for agreeing with me.
You are not ready to put in a fixed price bid until the architect comes up with a detailed plan.
None exists, but one is being put together.
prior to the curling rink grant application the ball park figure for building a 4 sheet Curling Rink was 1.5M. Once all the details were included and added in by the Architect and planner the cost for 3.6M was confirmed…..
That was the level of detail required to even try for the federal infrastructure grant.
Even then I am sure that a lot of people ended up voting against it were worried that it might actually end up costing more than the districts 1.3 million.
Is there any certainty that the $650,000 will be any where near enough? or is just the same as the $1.5 M ball park figure the curling rink started at?
An architect toured the building Thursday and another is expected Friday. Before any work can begin, an architect must lay out a plan for the interior, including locations to run electrical, plumbing and heating runs.
A structural engineer will be brought in to determine if walls need to be beefed up to meet today’s code. Then it’s work plan and budget time.
“The district wants a work plan and as close a budget as I can get,” said Campbell.
OMG!!!
Obviously there no plan or budget in place.
We have no idea if it will cost $550,000 or $2-3 Million to get this place up to standard.
I would have thought and hoped that our politicians … both local and provincial….. would be more careful with our tax dollars than to commit them to a project where the costs are so completely unknown.
The Curling club had to have all the details that The Primary school is just trying to find before even applying for the grant. The curling society paid $70,000 to get the detailed plans that the primary school is just gathering now.
The Federal government driven infrastructure program seems to be so much better run and have better oversight than our local and Provincial systems.