Trail Skills Centre officially moves into new location

Over the last 14 months, the building underwent significant renovations to accommodate the Skills Centre’s needs, which had grown too big for its previous location in the basement of the Fortis BC building.

Executive Director of the Skills Centre, Morag Carter, says their vision for the building involved creating an accessible, inclusive, and energy-efficient community facility for Trail residents—something she says the city was missing.

“There are a lot of great facilities in Trail, but there were a few that were missing. One of them is a truly accessible, community-focused building that can offer a range of different community services. The other piece that came with it is that we wanted to make sure the place was inclusive, and we wanted to ensure that if we were going to spend money on a fairly substantial renovation, it had to meet environmental goals.”

With the purchase of the building and the renovations, the project came in at around $7 million. Funds were donated by a variety of local organizations and businesses, with the Skills Centre taking out a mortgage to cover the rest.

In terms of environmental focus, contractors replaced gas heating systems with heat pumps and installed a 50-kilowatt solar array on the roof, effectively reducing the building’s energy consumption and costs by about 50 per cent.

There is an elevator, stroller and wheelchair ramps, community sharing spaces, multipurpose rooms, a community kitchen, and a boardroom for community members to rent, borrow, and work in, with each space large enough to accommodate different levels of capacity.

The renovation was almost completed on time, with Carter saying they originally projected it to take about 12 months when it started in the spring of last year.

Because they knew the project would be extensive, Carter says they tried to hire locally when possible, which she thinks helped keep the timeline on track.

“The advantage of going for local and regional contractors who work here is that everybody knows what the barriers are in sourcing products. So it allowed us to know that we would be able to achieve the project and complete it within the timeline we had set.”

It was also important that the project benefited the community even during the construction phase, with Carter saying they worked hard to ensure a significant portion of the $7 million investment was circulated back into the local economy.

“One of the things I’m proudest about in all of this is that the investment we made in this building stayed local. The contractors are local, the skills are local, and it was local financing that supported it. So, from my perspective, that is an amazing gift that we have been able to share with the community.”

The 9,200-square-foot building is also the new home of the Trail Family Action Network, the Kootenay Brain Injury Association, and soon the Family and Individual Resource Society.