Plans for community cultural hub at former Mercury Theatre building beginning to take shape
As initial renovations to the former Mercury Theatre building at 14 Church St. N near completion, a plan for how the building’s first and second floors, and its basement, will be transformed into a community cultural hub while meeting myriad community needs is beginning to take shape.
As initial renovations to the former Mercury Theatre building at 14 Church St. N near completion, a plan for how the building’s first and second floors, and its basement, will be transformed into a community cultural hub while meeting myriad community needs is beginning to take shape.
To date, the Town of St. Marys has spent roughly $1.5 million to bring the building to a point where it can be ready for whatever future uses council and its downtown service location review steering committee ultimately land on. At its March 25 regular meeting, St. Marys council approved a list of space requirements for each room proposed for the building that will inform architectural concept designs for the committee and council’s consideration.
While council did not discuss the list of space requirements at their March 25 meeting, on March 18, councillors met for a strategic priorities committee meeting and heard from downtown service location review consultant Angela Brayham as she presented the steering committee’s recommendations.
“Today is a key check-in,” town CAO Brent Kittmer said at the March 18 strategic priorities committee meeting. “ … I’d always planned and built in this checkpoint where the (steering) committee would work to a certain point, work themselves through the public engagement, develop a list of possible uses for 14 Church St. and 5 James St. (the St. Marys train station), get themselves down to prioritizing those, get themselves down to a point where they can say, ‘This is the amount of space that should be assigned to these uses,’ but we were never going to proceed to concept design until council had said, ‘Yes, we believe this is our vision for the use of these buildings.’ ”
While a potential future vision was outlined for the train station and St. Marys Station Gallery at 5 James St. in an earlier presentation by Brayham at the March 18 meeting, the consultant and former director of Gallery Stratford presented councillors with a list of proposed purpose-built rooms on each of the floors at 14 Church St. N, as well as the space requirements for each of those uses.
On the main floor, that list includes a 700 square-foot multi-purpose programming space, a 375 square-foot community social gathering space, a 650 square-foot art gallery, a 125 square-foot market/gift shop space and a 150 square-foot kitchenette and bar area, as well as the potential incorporation of temporary and moveable stacked-shelving to display a portion of the St. Marys Public Library collection – for example, the teen collection, which could help attract youth to the building.
On the second floor, the list includes a 700 square-foot maker space/art studio or classroom, a 400 square-foot adult-learning classroom/digital lab, a 150 square-foot adult-learning office, a 250 square-foot community meeting space for groups of 10-12 people and two 90 square-foot meeting/study spaces. That floor would also include 200 square feet of shared office space with room for about three to four people, and three 100 square-foot offices for municipal staff.
In the basement, meanwhile, 150 square feet has been set aside for a staff breakroom, 400 square feet was allocated for a Friends of the Library processing/workspace and 250 square feet each was allocated to a Friends of the Library storage space and an art gallery storage space. Each of the building’s floors is about 3,500 square feet in size, and the remaining space on each floor has been allocated for things like a main lobby and reception desk on the main floor, washrooms, staircases, janitorial storage, corridors and an elevator to ensure accessibility.
“Operating and capital costs are at the front of my mind right now in looking at this,” Coun. Dave Lucas said, voicing some of the concerns he had with approving a plan like this one at this stage in the project. “As I look through our needs, I’m writing down our needs and I’m putting a question mark beside them. We now have a gallery piece in this and we just had a presentation on the (Station) Gallery; we really have no idea where that’s going. … Adult learning, we’ve tucked space away upstairs for them (and) … I don’t know what the feasibility of that program is in the future, how that goes forward and what that looks like. My next question mark is library. We’ve got a sizeable budget for the library and I’m struggling getting my head wrapped around the fact that we’re going to increase their (programming) space and their opportunities, but we’re not going increase manpower, budget size, all that kind of stuff.
“So, I’m just really struggling. I love the idea of the community hub; I think that’s great. I think we’ve gotten to a really good spot, but in my head, I have a lot of questions marks. … In my head, it’s just how do we operate this without putting a huge tax burden on our ratepayers?”
In response, Kittmer reminded councillors the town purchased 14 Church St. N without any real operational plan for the building. The reason for purchase, he said, was because it is across the street from town hall and the library, and it is the only real option for new municipal offices as town staff grows in the future. He noted the capital cost of bringing this building online could be an additional $3-4 million, but the plan, as it stands, solves a lot of St. Marys’ current spaces needs like the library’s need for dedicated programming space and the need for meeting spaces for smaller clubs and groups.
“In terms of operating costs, yes it will add new operating costs because it is a new building,” Kittmer continued. “I’m hoping in initial years, through very good scheduling … it will just be staffed with our current complement so that when EarlyON is in there, it’s the EarlyON staff that’s responsible for the building and then when they transition it to the library for their programming, it’s now theirs. But that’s my vision, and I know there are conflicting visions out there. I know there are visions where once this happens, service levels can grow, staff can be added and those will be difficult discussions (council) will need to have at budget time every year.”
“In all the discussions to date, the list of spaces we’ve come up with are designs so that everything is multipurpose,” Brayham added. “So, the gallery could be another meeting room. It could be a community space. It’s a box, basically … so it could be used for anything. Same for the adult-learning space. If you don’t get the contract and they’re not here, you could decide to use that room as a larger office or whatever. Everything that we’ve come up with to date … can be multipurpose. … If we’re happy with the general notion of what the space needs are right now, what we label them for down the road could change.”
Ultimately, council approved the list of uses and space requirements with a few additions including a staff washroom in the basement, the need to bring in as much natural light as possible and the need to ensure clear sightlines for staff who are monitoring the space, among other items. In addition, staff asked staff to present a concept operational plan for the building along with construction costs for consideration when the concept designs are presented to council.
Now that council has approved this plan for the building, architects with a+LiNK Architecture Inc. will develop design concepts that will then be reviewed and refined by town staff and the downtown service location review steering committee before they are presented to council.
By Galen Simmons, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Wilmot-Tavistock Gazette
