HeroWork Radical renovation

Many cities in Canada have experienced an increased demand for supportive social services, and this is true of Victoria’s downtown community. Drive the neighborhood surrounding Pandora and Quadra Streets on any given day, and you will witness the harsh disparity that has taken hold of many people living in the community.

The Victoria Cool Aid Society is an organization that has been providing housing, shelter, support, and health services to some of the city’s most vulnerable people since 1968. Cool Aid’s Downtown Community Centre, located on 755 Pandora Street, serves over 6,000 people each year and is the only space of its kind in the region providing free programming to sup- port individuals who are living in poverty or who are experiencing mental health or substance use challenges.

The Community Centre which serves as a community kitchen and provides supportive programming, daily drop-in meal services, and an emergency shelter space, has not seen any major updates since it was first constructed in the mid 1990s. The building was limited in terms of capacity, and it was disproportionately affected due to the pandemic.

In the fall of 2022, HeroWork completed a ‘radical renovation’ to the Downtown Community Centre by mobilizing local companies and hundreds of volunteers to perform a renovation in a condensed amount of time.

HeroWork is a local organization that transforms charities by transforming the buildings from which they provide their services. Performing urgently needed renovations to a charity’s facilities can allow that charity to increase its capacity and efficiency when serving individuals.

“Each project has its own unique challenge, and the last couple of years have been a big challenge,” says Trevor Botkin, General Manager at HeroWork. “But we had a rock-solid team and we’re completing these projects faster than what the market would typically see on a project of this size.”

For this radical renovation, the Community Centre received a restructured and more efficient main floor layout, updated and expanded community kitchen, new multi-purpose space, new exterior gathering place with landscaping redesign, along with updated lighting, plumbing, and HVAC systems, flooring, and paint. The facility also saw the addition of accessible and gender-neutral washrooms, computer stations, and additional storage solutions.

“The former layout was very closed off and it made it so that they were unable to run programs concurrently,” says Botkin. “This was largely due to the fact that the kitchen was so small that as soon as they started doing anything related to food, they had to shut down the rest of the building.”

Botkin says that in order to create a kitchen that could withstand the required volume, they had to relocate it to the opposite side of the building. “That required pulling up all of the services and tons of concrete to be able to move all the new connections and plumbing.”

Crews also completely replaced the lighting throughout the building with new LED installations.

“It was a different approach from a typical project,” says Travis Fox, Project Manager for DenMar Electric Ltd., the primary electrical contractor for the project. “Our responsibility was to identify any electrical problems and concerns and then work together with other contractors on site to find solutions. We had to get in there, understand the scope of work, and then develop a timeline that worked for everybody using the proper manpower to achieve our goals.”

The new kitchen, complete with upgraded appliances, is now approximately five times larger than the old kitchen. The renewed space means that the Cool Aid Society will be able to triple the amount of their programming and increase the number of people who are served at the community centre from 6,000 to 12,000 annually.

Teams also updated the outdoor area located in the back of the building creating a gathering space as well as an outdoor kitchen. “One of the goals of every community centre is to bring the community together,” says Botkin. “Especially during the pandemic, we saw the Community Centre affected a great deal because they had a lack of indoor space, plus it wasn’t designed for outdoor gatherings.”

Volunteers collapsed the existing tem- porary structure and constructed an outdoor cooking area complete with a built-in barbeque and pizza oven. Western Forest Products provided timber to construct a permanent 20’ x 30’ pavilion and the landscaping was overhauled creating a lush gathering space.

“We redid the landscaping and brought it down to a more manageable place while making it more aesthetically pleasing,” says Botkin.

The entire building is now fully accessible with automatic doors allowing visitors using mobility aids to move freely between spaces.

Since the space is used as an emergency shelter space the project had to be completed before the cold weather set in. That meant starting the project in August which was a challenge with people typically being on vacation or having children home from school. However, Botkin says that they set a volunteer record on this project. “We normally run around 500 volunteers per project, working approximately 5,000 hours,” he says. “On this project, we had almost 700 volunteers.”

Donating time, resources, and materials has given hundreds of volunteers the opportunity to be a part of a collaborative effort that supports something bigger.

“It always feels good to get out there and be part of the community in this way,” says Fox. “There was a great energy on site, and it was a good experience. Our team enjoyed it and we’re happy to go back and do it again.”

HeroWork’s next project is scheduled for the spring at Power To Be, an organization that helps provide access to youth, families, and adults living with cognitive, physical, financial, and social barriers that want to experience the outdoors. The project will renovate their facility located at Prospect Lake. n

VICA members who contributed to the Radical Renovation at the Cool Aid Society Downtown Community Centre provided by HeroWork

Andrew Sheret Limited

Banyan Group of Companies Ltd.

Butler Concrete and Aggregate Ltd.

Camosun College Women In Trades Training

Denmar Electric Ltd.

Farmer Construction Ltd.

H.I. Mechanical Inc.

Harbour City Kitchens

Houle Electric Ltd.

Island Floor Centre Ltd.

J.Lee Diamond Drilling Ltd.

Kinetic Construction Ltd.

Lewis Sheet Metal Ltd.

Monk Office Supply Ltd.

Namdor Reinforcing Steel (1987) Ltd.

Pinchin Ltd.

RJC Engineers

Redline Glass Ltd.

Removall Remediation Services Ltd.

Slegg Building Materials

Tri City Finishing

VICA Construct Your Future

Victaulic

HeroWork thanks all the businesses and individuals that helped with time, resources, and donations for this Radical Renovation.

VANCOUVER ISLAND’S LARGEST STEEL STUD, DRYWALL, ACOUSTIC CEILINGS, INSULATION, AND PAINTING CONTRACTOR.