W.B. Stephens building repairs nearly complete

By Christy Marsters

The Hants Journal/NovaNewsNow.com

Renovations to the W.B. Stephens facility in Windsor will soon be finished, but the job of fixing up this tired building has turned out to be bigger than initially anticipated. An asbestos issue is a factor.

Windsor CAO Louis Coutinho said council had first budgeted $595,000 for this building to cover costs of roof replacement, fire station flooring and some other contracting repairs, but the project ended up costing closer to $650,000 after renovations revealed an asbestos issue.

The town had to engage an engineer to mitigate the asbestos, retain a cleaning company to remove it and monitor air qualities to insure people’s safety, Coutinho said. “We found it in a couple areas, in the walls itself, but it can’t hurt anyone until you start breaking it.”

However, the problem was addressed and it was obviously time to spend some money on this approximately 50-year-old building, Coutinho said. “Any asset has a life cycle and if you spend money on maintaining that asset it will last you many years… We were getting leaky roofs and poor air quality in here– and we had put it (this project) off long enough.”

Mayor Paul Beazley said he was recently able to start moving into his office and, though things were still a little dusty, he thought it was real nice to be able to use this space now.

It’ll be great to go onto the next project after these building renovations are done and to be able to get back to business without disruptions, Beazley said. “It wouldn’t have been on the top of my priority list… but it has been on the list of things to do for many years. “We had to bite the bullet and do it,” Beazley said. “Once you start you’ve got to finish.”

Once the W.B. Stephens Building renovations are fully complete, the facility will go back to serving its regular functions as Windsor’s town hall, fire station, RCMP offices and council chambers. The mayor’s office will also be opened to the general public Tuesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. until noon, and Mayor Beazley will be available at these times.