The West Fraser Centre in Quesnel has come in slightly over budget.
$67,900 or .3 percent of the overall budget of 20.6 million dollars was the figure released at last night’s North Cariboo Joint Planning Committee meeting.
And while several committee members went out of their way to point out how minuscule that amount was in relation to the total project, what many members of the public may be more interested in is that there is a plan in place to fix some of the glitches that have become apparent.
One of those is the fact that a railing is in the sight lines of the first two rows in front of the media booth and the Dunkely Room.
The original plan was for glass but that was changed to try to keep costs down.
City Councillor Ron Paull expressed some disappointment with the architect…
“I’m actually disappointed that when we value engineered that down that we weren’t, and this is not to staff, this is to the architect, why weren’t we warned that this would present a visibility barrier because i think if we had of known that we wouldn’t have gone with it.”
That will now likely come back as a budget item over the next couple of years.
Mayor Bob Simpson noted however that for the most part they got it right with the building…
“So while there may be some engineering foibles that we have to fix about where railings and so on are, the sound quality in there is phenomenal, the light quality in there is phenomenal so the macro thing i think we got right and over the next couple of years there are going to be some refinements to fix some of the micro things.”
Staff will come back with a wish list from user groups on what changes they would like to see to the new arena.