The next stage in the decommissioning of the historic Civic Auditorium has been set. As of April 5th, tenders can be submitted to the City of Estevan to demolish, remove and dispose of the structure and it's materials, and to fill in the hole.

 "Currently right now at the Civic there is some hazard abatement going on to get rid of any materials that need to be removed before demolition, such as any asbestos that would be in the building. An RFP will be put out, we have had some interest from some companies both local and out of town for the full decommissioning and demolition of the Civic, hopefully to be done by June 15th," said City Manager Jeff Ward.

"There's a linear process that you have to follow, of course, with the decommissioning of any building. I'm following that to a 'T' to ensure the health and safety for everyone around that," explained Parks Manager Rod March.

"As of Monday, we started what's called a 'Hazardous Materials Abatement Program'. A survey that was done on that building indicated that there was quite an extensive amount of asbestos, PCB, lead, mercury, that sort of thing, and that's fairly typical. It's not that it's unsafe while the building was in service, but the fact is, we now have to remove it safely. Once it's disturbed, it becomes hazardous, so we need to make sure that all that process is followed."

Experts have been brought in to deal with the situation over the next few weeks.

"The demolition process will follow once the building is safe to enter, once all the hazardous materials are out of there. We anticipate, by the 27th of April, closing the RFP for the tender . May 7th there will be a recommendation to Council on awarding the proposal for demolition of the building. Once that procedure starts, we're targeting June the 15th for complete demolition and turning it back to vacant land," March shared, noting that they will try to fit the work into a window in the busy schedule expected in the exhibition area.

A decision as to future use for the lot will be up to City Council, though right now it appears that a parking lot will be the designation.

The work will involve...

  • Demolishing, removing and disposing of all building components and materials. It will all be taken down, hauled to the landfill and separated appropriately.
  • The subsurface components, such as concrete and associated debris will be removed. It will be trucked separately and deposited in a reserved location at the landfill.
  • The underground water and sewer lines will be removed.
  • The remaining hole will be filled in with clay and capped with 3/4 minus gravel, and compacted to 95 percent Proctor compaction.

"The curling rink should be fine on it's own. You'll still see the room that joins the two buildings, we'll be dealing with that in an appropriate time because there's still some shared sevices with respect to the emergency back up generators and stuff like that, we have to deal with after the fact," March added.