The project manager in charge of transforming City of Powell River’s building at Crossroads Village Shopping Centre into the new Powell River Public Library location said he does not anticipate any more delays now that a building permit has been issued.
Futurevest Investment Corporation co-owner Fred Formosa said he expects the project to be complete by the end of April, but added that he will have a more specific date when the project schedule is finalized over the next 30 days.
“We don’t foresee, moving forward, that anything will get in the way,” said Formosa. “We want to get this done.”
It will take a couple of weeks to contact all the sub-contractors and set project timelines, he added.
The city issued Futurevest the building permit Tuesday, October 11, after more than six months of delays due to disagreements over what work was required to bring the structure up to current building code standards.
“It feels great to finally be moving forward on this project,” said city director of infrastructure Tor Birtig. “The city has now issued the building permit and is now awaiting a firm schedule from Futurevest on the construction of the library.”
Chief librarian Terry Noreault said his staff greeted news of the permit being issued with excitement.
“We couldn’t be happier that this is moving forward,” said Noreault.
Once construction is complete in the spring, Noreault said he expects it will take about a month for the library to move into its new space; two weeks to set up the shelving and another two weeks for the actual move.
Some of the library’s new collections, 2,000 books donated by the Friends of the Library, are expected to arrive in the next few weeks, said Noreault.
Plans are to establish a pop-up library next month in vacant space above the new location to allow the public to check out the new material.
Formosa, who grew up in Powell River, currently lives in the Lower Mainland and plans on returning here for retirement, said his company took on the project and stuck with it out of a need to help the city.
“We really want to do this for the people of Powell River,” said Formosa. “We took this project on because they were having difficulty with projects that were too expensive, so we provided them with a less expensive option.”
Last spring, the city agreed to pay $4.9 million to former owner Futurevest for the building. Other options explored pegged the cost of a new library at an estimated $10 million.
A condition of the Crossroads Village deal was that Futurevest would also be the general contractor on the renovation project.
