Pierrefonds/Roxboro borough hall renovations planned

BY ELYSE AMEND

elyse.amend@transcontinental.ca

Pierrefonds/Roxboro recently approved a $300,000 contract with Villatech for renovations to the borough hall on Pierrefonds Boulevard.

The work will include installing a new handicapped washroom accessible to the public. According to borough communications officer Johanne Palladini, the new security card lock system on the borough hall’s doors means people needing access to the current handicapped washroom adjacent to the women’s restrooms must ask for the security card – something that is against the law. “Handicapped washrooms cannot be behind a locked door. People have to be able to access them without asking for a key. To conform, we have to build a new one,” Palladini said.

The women’s washroom will be enlarged to accommodate the new facility, which means some space will be taken away from the council room, and a new wall will have to be built, Palladini said.

At the same time, Villatech will replace the council room’s carpeting and wallpaper as well.

Also included in the project is the replacement of the borough hall’s outside doors.

“The current ones open and close with the wind all day. We heat the outside and lose energy,” she said. “The ones now are 25 years old — as old as the building.”

The doors will be replaced with automatic sliding doors.

The borough will also replace the reception desk, which Palladini said is not set up appropriately.

“The receptionist, her back is facing the entrance, which is not very polite,” she said. When the borough hall was built in the 1980s, the front door was originally the door that now faces the library. “So then, she was facing the front. But now, almost no one uses that door.”

The renovations are scheduled to start at the beginning of March and be done in time for the April borough council meeting.



PULLQUOTE:

Handicapped washrooms cannot be behind a locked door. People have to be able to access them without asking for a key. — Johanne Palladini