Province spends $4M in upgrades on Bonnyville and St. Paul courthouses

Courthouses in Bonnyville and St. Paul are seeing provincial dollars go into improvements.

The Alberta Government announced $2.8 million of work at St. Paul and $1.2 million at the Bonnyville site late last week.

The money comes from the province’s Capital Maintenance and Renewal fund.

“I’m very happy to see that these two much-needed upgrade projects were included in the Capital Maintenance and Renewal Program,” said Bonnyville-Cold Lake-St. Paul MLA David Hanson in a press release.

“Shovel-ready projects such as these are a priority and provide important investment into our provincial infrastructure.”

The St. Paul courthouse roof will be replaced at $1.8 million, while $700,000 is going towards resurface the parking lot, and $340,000 towards replacing the building management control system.

The roof replacement and parking lot resurfacing are expected to be done by Sept. 30, 2021, while the management control system could be done by end of March 2021.

The Bonnyville provincial building and courthouse will see exterior glazing replaced and improvements for energy performance and reducing air leakage. These projects are expected to be done by end of October and December 2021, respectively.

Taylor Hides, government communications officer, explained that Alberta Infrastructure regularly evaluates facilities and scores them based on priority. Bonnyville and St. Paul happened to make the list.

“These projects are then added to a list, which is organized by priority ranking. These justice-facility projects were chosen based on their ranking and because they could begin right away, getting Albertans back to work as quickly as possible,” said Hides.

Replacements were most recently done at the St. Paul courthouse in 2015.

The Bonnyville Courthouse was built over 1978–1979 and St. Paul over 1986–1987.

The provincial government selected 18 communities for upgrades to justice-related facilities as part of the Capital Maintenance and Renewal fund.